how many times, can a hard disk be formatted?

Question

I have already done a reformatting of my hard disk, 2 months back, and I want to do reformatting now, Can I do it. Actually, for how many times can a hard disk be formatted

Answer 1

There is no limit. But this is very time consuming. Try to keep your comptuer alive instead.

Follow some of these simple maintanance tips:

In general a good maintenence schedule include:
- chkdsk, scandisk or test disk
- disk cleanup
- defrag
- check anti-virus and run full scans
- check anti-spyware and run full scans
- good backups of your data
- remember or write down all passwords
- know where all software installation disks are

I recommend the FREE anti-spyware programs like SpyBot Search & Destroy and Ad-aware. You can get these at http://www.download.com

Good luck

Answer 2

In theory you can format your drive as much as you want. The real question is why would you really need to do that on a habitual basis? If you want to do some spring cleaning Ok, you can reformat, I'd suggest you'd back up file that you need , just because computers tend work with Murphy's law. If you wish, read on and I'll describe what happens when you format a drive and then you can deside if you really need to format it. When you format a drive you're rebuilding the File Allocation Table (FAT), which is the directory that tells the computer where on the hard drive each file is located. When you delete a file you're actually just removing its reference on the FAT table, not the actual file.

You may think that when you delete or format a drive that the file is deleted, but that is only partially true. A file is fully deleted when the area of that particular file is overwritten along with its reference in the FAT. In reality that may be a while because most files are scattered all over the drive. And this is why files can be recovered after deleting or formatting the drive, the reference or the file isn't overwritten. The only true way to make sure that a file cannot be recovered is to use special softwares that do what is considered a low-level format and this can take a long time and I wouldn't reccommend unless you have a prepared backup of files in case something goes wrong Some low- level formatters make several passes to make sure that the data is overwritten several times in order to prevent recovery. In all If you want to start on a clean slat that's fine just make sure you're prepared your back up plan!

Answer 3

A disk can be partitioned and formatted numerous times... There's really no definite number of times you can do it.

I have a Western Digital HD that I've reformatted daily for a 3 month period because I was testing various operating systems... Till this day, the HD still functions... But I no longer use it as a primary disk or system partition. I just use it for storage.

Answer 4

There is no fixed limit on how many times a HDD can be re-formatted .

The issue is more as to how long the HDD will last before it fails and Format / Reformatting is not a cause of HDD mechanical Failures .

Format C:\ - No problems

Answer 5

format until your heart is content your hard drive should never go bad because of formatting, drives ussually go bad because of somekind of defect within the drive. To really clean your drive there are different types of formatting such as low level formatting. There are other things that you can do including low level formating that will wipe a drive clean and I mean clean nothing will ever be recovered off of this drive after your done and you need no special software. It will be like buying a untainted drive straight off the shelf.

Answer 6

Until the drive fails in short.

At work, we format some drives several times a year with no ill effects for preventive maintenance and service.

Answer 7

really doesn't matter.

Few years back...
I had a maxtor harddrive which I reformated over 20 times..
...which survived over 2 years...
I also had a another maxtor hard which only went for 3 months.

I don't see why reformatting would be any harm to harddrives.

It's just luck when it comes to hard drives,.. some go long, some don't.

Answer 8

listen , hard disk is meant to safe u r data , u can format it n number of times.Its like sweeping a room , but make it sure,its done once in 3 weeks . take care have fun

Answer 9

It can be formatted over and over again. There's no real limit. Although, I suggest not doing it TOO frequently, as the physical strain may cause damage if you do it more than every couple of months.

Answer 10

a drive can be formatted X number of times