Question about Format/Quick Format

richnrockville · 04 Mar 2011

I don't remember the last time I installed windows and did a full format. I have always used quick and have never had a problem. But Mr Murphy will someday jump up on you

Rich

boogieboy · 07 Mar 2011

Thanks everyone for the Help

im going to Full Format the HDD.

pallesenw · 07 Mar 2011

Despite other information given in the thread, a full format in windows 7 will by default overwrite all sectors in the chosen partition. That change was made in vista.

boogieboy · 07 Mar 2011

Im doing complete erase with diskpart right now :) there's no stopping now lol

thanks for the info.

gregrocker · 07 Mar 2011

pallesenw said:

Despite other information given in the thread, a full format in windows 7 will by default overwrite all sectors in the chosen partition. That change was made in vista.

Source?

pallesenw · 07 Mar 2011

I have given the source in other threads. It is freely available at microsoft.com

gregrocker · 07 Mar 2011

That's what I thought.

To overwrite code it requires Secure Erase with one set of zeroes, which does not take 5-10 seconds as Win7 format does by default but about an hour per 320gb.

boogieboy · 07 Mar 2011

My 500GB took 1 hour 20 mins to fully format

pallesenw · 07 Mar 2011

gregrocker said:

That's what I thought.

To overwrite code it requires Secure Erase with one set of zeroes, which does not take 5-10 seconds as Win7 format does by default but about an hour per 320gb.

You cannot do a full format in that time.

gregrocker · 07 Mar 2011

boogieboy said:

My 500GB took 1 hour 20 mins to fully format

That was Diskpart Clean All which is a Secure Erase, or writing zeroes to the HD to overwrite fully any data.

You'll still need to partition and format before install.