Hard Drive Formatting

[ITGIRL]

Good afternoon everyone,
I have a very simple question as I have heard numerous different answers. If I have to reformat my hard drive many times because of a virus, is this going to cause problems on my hard drive? Will it wear out sooner because of those formats?

Thanks everyone!

 

[seavixen32]

1. Formatting your hard drive will not cause any undue wear.
2. If you don't get a virus you shouldn't need to format your drive unless you're going to partition it and such like.
3. If you keep away from dodgy sites and use anti-virus software you shouldn't have any problems with a virus infection.
4. Once you get your system the way you want, create a system image as a full backup, and then restore your computer from the image if need be.

 

[TheReaper]

I don't think it's possible that frequent formatting would cause it to wear out any sooner than it would otherwise. Haven't seen it happen yet.

 

[Bill2]

Why would you reformat many times? One virus should be enough to learn ones lessons from.

Other than that, what drives out hard drives is heat and mechanical failures which are in any case hard to predict. So proceed cheerfully.

 

[ITGIRL]

This is more for a work computer. A couple of employees like to use it just to download random programs that seem to always give it a virus. I have had to format it 6 times already due to a bad virus.

 

[seavixen32]

Sack the employees then, much quicker than cleaning up an infected drive.

 

[Bill2]

Strange. If its a work computer, one would assume there are restrictions in place that prevent random downloading and installing. You ought to ask your IT admin to stop this sort of activity.

And really, why do you need to reformat every time? Dont you have a decent antivirus to take care of that?

But if its a work computer, why should it matter to you? Or are you the admin?

 

[ITGIRL]

I wish I had control over what could and couldn't be used on that computer I am not the admin. The admin is choosing to let it go because he doesn't want the employees to get him in trouble. I am in the IT department and am the one who has to format it. I have tried to address it numerous times and they just don't want to hear what I have to say. Our antivirus program is out of date so it is not catching everything. We also do not have any rules in place that state what employees can and cannot do on a work computer. Dumb I know and I have also written a policy that again my boss doesn't want to enforce

 

[Bill2]

I wish I had control over what could and couldn't be used on that computer I am not the admin. The admin is choosing to let it go because he doesn't want the employees to get him in trouble. I am in the IT department and am the one who has to format it. I have tried to address it numerous times and they just don't want to hear what I have to say. Our antivirus program is out of date so it is not catching everything. We also do not have any rules in place that state what employees can and cannot do on a work computer. Dumb I know and I have also written a policy that again my boss doesn't want to enforce

Options.

1) Quit.

2) Use something like Deep Freeze.

3) Create images you can restore from.

in that order.

 

[ITGIRL]

haha I like your order I actually did get a job offer so I will be putting in my two week notice on Monday. However in the mean time I have to deal with this issue. At this point I have taken away their internet privileges so they cannot download anything. But I was curious about the formatting. Thanks!

 

[DeaconFrost]

Whoa...a female on a computing board....a rare occurrence, indeed.

A format won't do any more "damage" to a drive than regular usage. Even a low level format, isn't really that anymore...it's just writing zeros to the drive. Nothing to worry about.

I'm my own IT Department as well...staff of one. We should form a support group.

 

[JDobbsy1987]

We should form a support group.

There is a good one here - http://www.sevenforums.com/

:roflmao:

 

[ITGIRL]

I know what you mean Deacon! It always helps to have another IT person to help out. I do check out the forum a lot and it helps me with a lot of problems we have here!