2007-01-07 13:46:34 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
Short answer:
Yes, but I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Details:
Technically, any use of your hard drive is wearing down the bearings inside the hard drive and generating heat, which will eventually break down.
Most hard drives are rated by the manufacturer for a use life of 100,000 Hours MTBF (Median time before failure) - What this means is the average time of a hard drive before failure is 100,000 hours (or 11 years of 24/7 use). For the exact amount of hours you would have to look it up on your manufacturer's website.
Reformatting your hard drive usually involves deleting and replacing and reading less than 2gb of data. The typical user who defrags, downloads, and plays memory intensive games will do the exact same amount of seeks, if not more to the hard drive. So unless you don't plan on using your hard drive, which you paid money for, you can't really prevent it.
In fact, by reformatting every so often, so long as you don't fill your hard drive to the brim every time, you are likely reducing file fragmentation which will not only increase hard drive performance but REDUCE the amount of usage on the hard drive.
For more information on fragmentation, see the source link.
Hope this helps!
Ken
2007-01-07 14:00:21 · answer #1 · answered by A: Ken 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
why in the world would you reformat a hard drive a few times a week!? no, you can't damage it. data is all 1's and 0's. when you reformat a disk, all you do is change all the 1's to 0's. cant hurt anything. basically you could rephrase your question "does using my hard drive damage it?" no, you're fine.
2007-01-07 13:51:18 · answer #2 · answered by racedayvinyls 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I would say yes if you do it that often you would be damaging the hard drive slowly but surely. Why would you need to reformat that often anyways?
2007-01-07 13:50:25 · answer #3 · answered by mojo2093@sbcglobal.net 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
That's putting a lot of pressure on your harddrive. Is there any particular reason why your formatting your harddrive that much? Once your system is set up, there is no reason to keep formatting the harddrive like that.
2007-01-07 13:50:00 · answer #4 · answered by tw0cl0n3m3 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
no. But, you could pull out the drive, and only run a LiveCDrom of Linux, that has 310 different distros at http://livecdlist.com
I rec. you start with http://pclinuxos.com and then do http://knopper.net/knoppix and follow with http://ubuntu.org and try out all six of those distros...
2007-01-07 13:58:01 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
it can you may be erasing blocks on your hard drive. it isnt good to format a drive a few times a week.
2007-01-07 13:48:43 · answer #6 · answered by vitti93 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
it truly is real that re-formating dameged the sectors. yet do no longer ignore that - Little understanding is risky ingredient.. it truly is going to damage modern sectors and creates new one. U can format it many cases..............
2016-12-28 08:50:55 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
It might wear it out. Nothing lasts forever.
2007-01-07 13:56:24 · answer #8 · answered by Michael M 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
no.....
but i suggest a good evidence eliminator program instead, such as Cyberscrub.
2007-01-07 13:52:26 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
No.
2007-01-07 13:48:18 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋