Formatting Your Hard Drive

[Rip The Jacker]

Well, I've formatted my hard drive a bunch of times. Switching from FAT32 to NTFS and back, I've done it a lot. Is this bad for my hard drive???

[Los]

i dont think so, i mean ur just cleaning it every time...its like you reset it back to zero...

[Somebody1234]

I see no problem with doing that. You are just writing to the drive when doing that.

[RedRival]

Whatever said above is true although it's still preferable not to format your computer too many times. I had my fair share of HDD breakdowns, BIOS problems, and random occasions where I have to kick the CPU hard.
Formatting is great for SOME HDDs, while unhealthy for the less stable ones, and there is absolutely no way to find out whether your HDD falls in which category. I had 3 breakdowns recently after formatting, where the IDE Hard-Drive cannot be found. FIrst two times, it seems as though there was a connection problem and I merely just have to kick it for it to boot. Third time, I had to diagnose my HDD with a floppy downloadable from the manufacturer's site, then it worked. My situation is pretty bad, HDD may go bust anytime.

I prefer not to format too many times. BTW if you are using a Maxtor Hard Drive. Please do go to http://www.maxtor.com and download Powermax Floppy Disc INstallation. It works like a boot disc, but it checks your HDD for errors, and if you're lucky, fix it. This is for MAxtor Drives only...

[wolfman10_2000]

I've done it about over 80 times and my computer is doin good, atleast I hope

[Rip The Jacker]

Oh, so its ok to format a lot. Just being safe.... thanks to everyone who replied!