Questions regarding formatting and restarting.

[toyota liteace]

Hi,


1) Will frequent formatting harm the hard disk in the long run.


2) Will frequent restarting harm my pc in the long run. I have this
habit of restarting my pc every hour or so.



Thank You.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

(e-mail address removed) (toyota liteace) wrote in

Hi,


1) Will frequent formatting harm the hard disk in the long run.


2) Will frequent restarting harm my pc in the long run. I have this
habit of restarting my pc every hour or so.

No to both. The worst you can expect is just a lot of time spent waiting
for formats and system restarts to finish.

If you were powering your PC on and off again, I might be concerned about
the power supply & switch, but even that would take a long time before it
failed. Hitting start -> shutdown -> restart won't harm it though.

 

[Crazy Horse]

To whomever can comment on this, I'm all ears...

(e-mail address removed) (toyota liteace) wrote in

-----------------------------------
I was relieved to hear your answer on this. And not to put too fine a
point on it but I assume your answer (that repeated formatting will not
compromise the harddrive) applies to "low level" formats as well as the
*quick* formats that Windows often offers as an option in the dialogue
box. I assume the quick formatting simply resets directory information,
whereas the low level formatting actually flips all the bits to "0".

I've searched this newsgroup specifically for this topic because last
evening, a young friend of mine (studying comp.sci in college) stated
with great confidence that "repeatedly formatting a harddrive really does
great damage to it".¹ I've been involved with computers since 1980 and
worked in I/T support for a good half-dozen years. In all those years, I
never came across any information that suggested that doing a low-level
format would/could harm a harddrive.² Yet, this young friend of mine
seemed absolutely certain about this.

I mention this by way of wondering if anyone besides the above author
(toyota liteace) can corroborate his statement... or alternately, does
anyone disagree with his answer?

I certainly appreciate any information anyone would like to offer.

Thanks.
_______
-CH
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
1. This came up in response to my having reported that in the process of
trying to accomplish a clean install of Windows 2000 on my new DELL
laptop (I *never did* succeed and gave up after something between 12 to
18 tries -- speaking of a waste of time!), I had repeatedly reformatted
all or portions (partitions) of the harddrive. That's what prompted him
to tell me that this was harmful, etc.
2. I *do* remember once talking to a hardware engineer who said that
there's a way to perform a hardware formatting operation that's even more
"low level" than the typical low-level format you can issue via an end-
user operating system command. Perhaps it's *this* type of "hard"
formatting that can eventually degrade a harddrive.

 

[Daniel F Valot]

Hi,

In fact there are three formatting levels,
1- The fast format offered by windows explorer for example, which just clean
the FAT and directory area (except deffective mapped sectors).
2- the normal format which re-write sector pointer and unimportant data in
data sector area (0xf6 or zero's).
3- Low level format only available with special diagnostics format program
(do not do this !!!!).

Writing format data do not harm the disk more that writing you own data. But
....
Low level format will erase precious datat writen at the factory which can
verify datat level (analogically vs numerically) and flag some data area as
deffective. If you do a low level format you will most certainly find these
area good, and the disk will not be as reliable, because these area are not
top quality.

Another problem is that you start doing format operations usually when the
disk has problems. And during all these format operations, the disk may end
its dying process...

Othere than that, you can do operations 1 or 2 every morning if you want
without any more problems that when writing to the disk.

D.Valot

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hi,

In fact there are three formatting levels,

Nonsense, there's only 2:
File system (volume) formatting and Low Level (drive/track) Formatting

1- The fast format offered by windows explorer for example, which just clean
the FAT and directory area (except deffective mapped sectors).

2- the normal format which re-write sector pointer and unimportant data in
data sector area (0xf6 or zero's).

3- Low level format only available with special diagnostics format program
(do not do this !!!!).

This is usually actually fine because the diagnostic usually do the Pseudo LLF.
There are very little (to none) drives that still allow a real LLF (track format).
And IBMs have an alternative LLF command (Format Unit).

4- The pseudo Low Level Format that just overwrites (initialize) every sector
on the physical drive.

Writing format data do not harm the disk more than writing your own data.
But ...

Low level format will erase precious data writen at the factory
Nope.

which can verify data level (analogically vs numerically) and flag some data
area as defective.

Nonsense. Factory discarded sectors are not available for reformatting.

If you do a low level format you will

most certainly

Nonsense, there is no such certainty.

find these area good, and the disk will not be as reliable, because these area
are not top quality.

For sectors that previously were reassigned on a specific pattern and are
now checked good on the standard format pattern, that may be true (or not).
That actually depends on what actually happened to what made that sector go
"appear" bad.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

1) Will frequent formatting harm the hard disk in the long run.

No. As said in this thread already, for the disk it is like writing.

2) Will frequent restarting harm my pc in the long run. I have this
habit of restarting my pc every hour or so.

Depends.

If you do cold restart (from the POV of the electrnics), i.e. a
power-off, you might get problems. If your PSU is marginal, it goes
through a lot of stress in each cold restart. Also if you use a CRT
that is switched off and on during the restart (not talking about
sleep mode, but hard power-off), it might die some years earlier.

HDDs are not a problem since they are specified for >= 40.000
start-stop cycles today, which gives you a decade or so even
with this habit.

If you do a warm restart (from the POV of the electronics), i.e.
just hit reset or do a software reboot, none of these concerns
apply and your hardware is not stressed significantly more than in
normal operation.

Arno