Reformatting Hard Drive

The machines we love to hate

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Andy Sandoval
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Reformatting Hard Drive

Post by Andy Sandoval »

I like to reformat my hard drive periodically and was wondering, what's the difference in a regular reformat which takes much longer and the "quick reformat"? Is there an advantage to the regular reformat? :?
Mitch Drumm
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Post by Mitch Drumm »

A regular format scans for bad sectors, which takes extra time.

A quick format does not scan the disk for bad sectors.

I periodically run chkdsk /r to see if I have bad sectors and always make a point to do that before installing an OS. Then I just do a quick format.