time to format an additional hardrive

  • Thread starter Thread starter mb
  • Start date Start date
M

mb

i'm going to format an additional harddrive (not the one windows xp is
running from), i was wondering what the difference between a quick format
and a normal format is? and how long each of them will take with an 80GB
harddrive? can anyone advise. thanks.
 
The quick format just removes the first letter of installed files, while the
normal format wipes out all of the files, and checks for bad sectors.
An 80 GB drive will usually take about 10-15 minutes for a normal format,
depending on the speed of the CPU.
 
Hi,

I agree with Squire. When you choose to run a regular format on a volume,
files are removed from the volume that you are formatting and the hard disk
is scanned for bad sectors. The scan for bad sectors is responsible for the
majority of the time that it takes to format a volume.

If you choose the Quick format option, format removes files from the
partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option
if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your
hard disk is not damaged.

More information can be found at the following article:

302686 Differences between a Quick format and a regular format during a
"clean"
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=302686

Sincerely,

William Wang
Microsoft Online Support Engineer

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