Originally Posted by
BigLar
I hadn't formatted a hard drive in ages. Today, I'm putting together a small system and I'm using a 120 GB drive. I had to partition it, so the big partition was about 110 GB. When you do this, you have to destroy the original partition, set up the new ones, and do the actual format.
Three hours and forty-five minutes for the format and surface scan.
If you have a nice terabyte drive and are thinking of re-formatting it, think again. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands.
And when Windows gives you the option of a 'quick format', take it!
there's no need to reformat the drive to partition it, although you will lose the data on it (unless you do a live partition).
as for a surface scan, it's a waste of time. drives automatically remap bad blocks. a better way to test the health of a drive is with smart utils, although it too is no guarantee.