What will happen if you format a hard disk many times? Will it damage the hard disk?
Ex. Installing a new OS every week.
What will happen if you format a hard disk many times? Will it damage the hard disk?
Ex. Installing a new OS every week.
There are two methods of formatting a drive.
A quick format simply overwrites the MFT (Master File Table) and is done in a matter of seconds. In this case, nothing more than the equivalent of writing a file to the hard drive is occurring.
An unconditional format zeroes out every byte on the partition and generates a large amount of sequential writes to the disk.
In both cases, the activity of formatting the drive is less stressful than the every day reading and writing of files that causes the drive's heads to jump around over the platters seeking pieces of files.