hello ,
can the many of formats and fdisk affect the hard disk badly ? and why ?
thanks 4 help

Hello bibo2003344 -
And welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums!

No, formatting the drive is really no different than the typical wear a drive receives reading/writing through every day use.

I suppose constantly Formatting could cause the drive to work a little harder than typical use, but you won't be doing it every day now will you. :D

Believe me, if someone has a different thought on this subject, you will hear from them....Stick around! ;)

Just for the sake of being contentious I was trying to come up with a counter argument :confused: .... but failed. :D

Actually a format is a lot less stressful than day to day normal operation, it is only a write to the the beginning of the disk and a read of the rest of it....and generally the heads are going from start to finish without jumping all over the place.

what about a zero fill ? which seems to be a popular thing to do at the moment when format becomes neccasary, not forgetting that generally multiple passes are done, probable between 3 and seven (I would imagine) though any number can be done.

mjc brings up a good point about the heads "jumping all over the place" through "normal" use.

I'm also wondering though about the life of the physical components of the drive...Like motor, bearings, the head actuator, friction on the spindle from spinning platters, springs, and on and on...

I guess what I'm getting at here, is what would last longer- A drive that is used every day in a "typical manor", or a drive that was set to format over and over until it died?

Guess I'm getting off the subject a little here.

Anyway bibo2003344....Format to your hearts content. :)

Zero fill is about as stressful as a full scandisk.

The most stress comes from constantly moving the heads back and forth, like when reading info for loading a program on a badly fragmented drive. A sero fill, scandisk, etc will move the heads from the start to the end. The stress, is on the head mechanism and is more likely the part to fail.

Of course, it you have data on the disk, either a fdisk repartition or a format pretty much fries your data.... Your hardware will be fine, but any installed software is done....