formating your PC
By nayaz1625
@nayaz1625 (131)
Mauritius
March 8, 2010 12:09pm CST
Hi. It is a known fact that formating ones PC is an easy solution to many problems like too many viruses and malware on the PC and one is unable to remove all. Alsom when files are corrupted, the best solution are reinstalling the programs or formating the PC completely. Do you think that formating is really the solution? What are the drawbacks? Do that affect the performance and life of a PC?
1 person likes this
9 responses
@kaylachan (69776)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
8 Mar 10
To be perfectly honest. It doesn't hurt to reformatt your computer maybe twice a year. Over time though it will effect the memory, because some of it is taken away each time you go through this entire process. But, sometimes a good cleaning is in order to get the machine performing its best.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
8 Mar 10
Reformatting cannot affect RAM and it does not take any hard disk space away unless there are bad sectors which need locking. If the file corruption that made it necessary to format was caused by bad sectors (unreadable disk areas), then formatting will lock those sectors but with modern hard disks, if bad sectors occur, it usually means that the hard disk is getting old and needs replacing.
@___SKY___ (541)
• Hong Kong
8 Mar 10
Hello friends!!
If you are tired doing formatting again and again, you can try to make a back up image for your whole system that you think in good state, meaning no virus, no errors once you start doing back up. This is good idea to have because once your computer experiencing a problem and you have back up, you can restore it easily. Hope this help whose tired doing reformatting..
Happy Lotting....
1 person likes this
@apocalypsereturns (368)
• India
8 Mar 10
Well formatting does have a affect on the hard disks performance, although minimal but still there.
The hard disk is cleany wiped of all the physical sectors tracks and other partitions during the process..
but its no concern untill you format you PC every second day..
Also i recommend a quick format as its less injurious to the computer as only the formatting tabnle is deleted and no changes to the hard disk is done
Its quick also!!!!!!!!
@magtibaygom (4858)
• Philippines
9 Mar 10
Here's the funny thing about that solution: Before you format the hard drive, you often make a back-up of the contents of your hard drive. Then you format. Then thinking you have already cleaned your disk, you installed back the programs and files (from back-up). The funny thing is, you formatted the hard drive to clean it from trash, then you install back the trash? :)
@magtibaygom (4858)
• Philippines
9 Mar 10
That's what I have observed with people who often take reformatting a quick solution to their problem. They cleaned the hard disk from garbage by reformatting, then install back the garbage after reformatting!
Reformatting the hard drive is not an ideal activity that's foisted on the computing public as a necessary thing. It's not. In fact, you should never, ever, have to reformat your computer's hard drive. It's something they do at the factory. It's something a computer technician does. It's no longer anything a computer user has to do.
As with reinstalling Windows, in only one circumstance do I suggest reformatting a hard drive: when a virus has attacked the computer so badly that the only solution to rid it of the virus is to reformat the hard disk. And, that's a pretty rare thing; an ugly thing; a thing that I hope never happens to you. :)
@remusmanea (80)
• Romania
11 Mar 10
If the computer gets really slow due to bugs and faulty software, a complete formatting is the best solution in my opinion. I format my computer about 5 times a year because it often gets overloaded with unused software and files, I don't know if there are any drawbacks , but I can't see any..At least it's my opinion.
@Vick77 (488)
• Mexico
8 Mar 10
I prefer try to fix the problem before reinstall all operating system, most problems could be resolved without formatting all. I hate to have reinstall all programs and configurations when I format completely my PC, so is so rare that I do that. My PC has running windows XP for about three years now, and it's running very smooth due to optimizations and cleaning I make regularly.
I don't think formating PC affect in any way the performance or lifetime, but as I say before I don't do it unless when it's absolutely necessary... ;)
1 person likes this
@user_786 (1338)
•
11 Mar 10
frequently formatting disk does have an effect on disk's performance. you should not be formatting it unless absolute necessary
@rosekiss (30414)
• Eugene, Oregon
9 Mar 10
I don't reformat my computer unless there is an need for it. Frankly, I don't like to format my computer, as it is time consuming, and at my age, I am not sure what I am doing, so if it needs to be done I will just take it in and do or have my son do it. The laptop I am using right now, I purchased in January of this yer, so it fairly new and I really haven't had all that many problems with it. I do tr to take good care of my computer and make sure I don't do anything that might cause problems. I run defrag once a month, and I scan for viruses once a week. I think maintaining our computers will keep them running in tip top shape, and we shouldnt' have to many problems when wse do that. Take care, and have a very good day. 
@trohichko (197)
• Bulgaria
9 Mar 10
You are asking about the drawbacks of formatting your hard drive, right?
Formatting the hard drive is like a situation where a room in your house need repairing in some way and you decide that it's better to demolish the whole house and build it from scratch than repairing the room that's the fault. Does it sound reasonable?!
In windows xp and upper windows versions when your system files are corrupted you should use windows repair console that the windows install CD possesses - it replaces the corrupted system files and corrects the boot sector if the failure persist most commonly the reason is a hardware problem. So I don't see any need of formatting except in cases when you need to install a new Windows version and you need a clean install.
