Formatting: "Quick" vs Regular?

[(PeteCresswell)]

Unencumbered by any knowledge, I've always used the regular
Format when formatting a drive NTFS.

Takes much longer than "Quick Format", so it must be doing
something more.

I'm guessing something about looking at each sector and maybe
eliminating bad sectors from the volume table of contents.

Am I even close?

Which formatting option do those in the know choose?

 

[JS]

By default when you format a drive it's a 'Full Format' unless you check the
Quick format box.
I would do a full format.

See: Differences between a Quick format and a regular format during a
"clean" installation of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686/en-us

 

[Lil' Dave]

Unencumbered by any knowledge, I've always used the regular
Format when formatting a drive NTFS.

Takes much longer than "Quick Format", so it must be doing
something more.

I'm guessing something about looking at each sector and maybe
eliminating bad sectors from the volume table of contents.

Am I even close?

Which formatting option do those in the know choose?

"Regular format" scans for bad sectors. During that process, if any bad
areas are found, they are marked for non-use in the file system.

This should not be confused by what may occur in a write zero scenario by a
hard disk manufacturer utility where bad areas are screened for non-use by
the operating system. In this scenario, the OS never "sees" these bad areas
of the hard disk. This is what I suggest for use prior to partition
creation and install of an operating system instead on an empty hard disk or
hard disk where nothing is saved for later use as with multiple partitions.
The potential problem with this is if too much of the hard disk is found
defective, the hard disk manufacturer's software may render the hard disk
unusable as the software determines at some point the hard disk is
defective.