Does formatting disks reduce the life of the disk??
By amitksing
@amitksing (1323)
India
January 28, 2009 8:51am CST
I format my hard disk once about every 3 months. I was wondering if it causes any ill effect on the disk. Well, I haven't figured out anything bad with the disk till now but am curious to know if it affects it adversely. What do you think?
5 responses
@mirage108 (3402)
• United States
28 Jan 09
yes formatting can reduce the life of your hard drive. your hard drive is rated upon operation hours, and total revolutions (this may be a lot and not sure of a total) but the more you format your hard drive the more revolutions you are using one for formatting, and one for the re-install of the software. and that all takes time, and revolutions.
May I ask why you do this every 3 months, I have had systems for upto 6 years and never reformatted the hard drive unless I was upgrading the OS in the system. but for me that is 4 computers with xp on them that are 3 and 5 years old and counting with no reformatting.
Interested in why the reformat
@amitksing (1323)
• India
28 Jan 09
After every few months, I find my computer to have become slower. Many times, the OS needs to be reinstalled as it becomes corrupt due to viral attacks or foul applications.
Thanks for the post.
@ishralene09 (2260)
• Philippines
28 Jan 09
Usually people reformat because they find a fresh installation of the OS makes their computer run fast again. Not in my case though, I don't want the hassle of reformatting over and over. My professor though, suggested reformatting every 3 months. I wonder why. Anyways I have a hard drive reformatted like more times than it should have been, and it still runs fine and dandy. I really don't think it reduces much life by reformatting but it does.
@shahnur_arefin (4)
• Bangladesh
28 Jan 09
After every few weeks,I find my computer to have become slower and slower.Many times, the OS needs to be reinstalled as it becomes corrupt due to viral attacks on the PC
@sudiptacallingu (10879)
• India
29 Jan 09
I don’t know about that but I dislike formatting mainly coz I have to store the data on a CD and then reload it along with all the programmes. It also changes the very look of my computer and then it’s a bother getting the same thing back.
@amitksing (1323)
• India
29 Jan 09
I don't usually need to take backup of my data over CDs since I format only the partition containing the Operating System.
@logaritse (388)
• Indonesia
29 Jan 09
Yeah, it can decrease lifetime of your hard disk. Every format, it recreate track at your hard disk and also if your program work to hard which need to read and write frequently also can decrease hard disk life time. If you have problem with your computer performance, you can use some tune up utility like tuneup 2009 *very good* and if your problem is virus related then get a better antivirus :) i think better to defrag your hard disk than reformat :)
@pkraj111 (2458)
• India
28 Jan 09
Yes. Formatting does reduce the life time of a computer. Life time of a hard disk depends on its hour of operation.
Even though I now I do not bother myself with that and format once about every month. I think at the rate the computer capacities are increasing, we will be forced to upgrade system frequently. And also computer items do not have a resale value. So I dont think it is necessary for my hard disk to last long
@vetrivelans (99)
• India
29 Jan 09
I ll never hear that formatting of a hard disk will reduce the life of the hard disk
but for what purpose you format the hard disk once in a three months that's an unnecessary format the hard disk when ever you want to install or upgrade newer OS
Formatting the hard disk regularly will not improve your disk performance
Take care
