Windows 7: Reinstalling Windows 7 - Delete vs Format

Delete all the partitions on the drive, then use the Intel toolbox to complete a secure erase. This will bring the SSD as close to factory original as possible.

Then install the operating system.

Glad to hear that you were fortunate.

Well, I wanted to change my default installation folder from an SSD to HDD. I think that's the only registry change that I've made.

Thanks for all the help guys - especially karlsnooks.

What problems would you expect to see when using the quick format option in modern times? My experience has shown quick format to work just fine.

Many years ago, when hard drives would have far more bad sectors and such, it was necessary to run a full format.

These days, these issues are no longer much of a concern. And hard drives made since about 1998 have some type of intelligent sector protection built in automatically. Therefore, when data is written to a potential bad sectors, the internals of the hard drive figure it out and write it to the spare sectors included by default with the hard drive.

And to restore your piece of mind, you could always load the OS and then run a chkdsk /r and this would be a much faster test to resolve the exact same issue. And if problems were discovered and repair damaged something, you would only have to reload your OS and wouldn't lose any personal data at this point.