What does reformatting your HD mean?

Question

I often hear the above expression. Is it something you have to do regularly or what? I' not sure what it means. Any explanations welcome.

LEEE At least they answered, not like your stupid remark

Answer 1

Basically it would wipe everything off your hard drive and you would have to reinstall your opertaing system on it.

Answer 2

In a nutshell it means erasing all the data on your hard drive.

It's not something you should do without considering the implications as all your files will be lost including (depending how your hard drive is set up) your operating system.

It's a bit like a tape cassette - you record music onto the tape the same as you save files. When you no longer want a song you can tape over it and if you no longer want any of the songs you can erase the whole tape.

However, with a computer hard drive, when you delete a file what you're actually doing is tagging that part of the hard-drive as being available to save data to - the original data ramains in place until something new is saved over it. Some people make the mistake of thinking that once a file has been deleted that's it - it's gone. There have been several cases of people disposing of old computers and then having their identities stolen, bank accounts raided etc because someone has been able to recover the 'deleted' files.

Reformatting is a means of clearing all of the hard drive ready for re-use, it's not a means of securely erasing the data. If you ever dispose of a computer then 'scrub' the hard-drive. Scrubbing is overwriting existing data with meaningless rubbish and to be really safe then scrub the hard-drive several times. There are free programs which will do this for you.

As for "Is it something you have to do regularly or what?" - no, you only need to reformat in exceptional circumstances such as serious disk errors or particularly nasty viruses and even then, a techy person can probably resolve the problem without reformatting.

If you do decide to reformat then make sure you've backed up all the files you want onto a separate hard-drive or CD's and that you have the original operating system disks for reinstallation together with all the programs you've installed.

I've been using computers since the days of the Sinclair Spectrum (now only found in museums) and my current system has 9 hard-drives - I've never had to reformat a drive.

If you're experiencing computer problems it can almost always be resolved without the need to reformat.

Answer 3

Contrary to a popular opinion and even a misnomer, reformatting does not delete the actual data on the hard disk drive. Rather, it restructures the file tables according to the settings at the time it is reformatted. Reformatting will erase your drive's knowledge of what files reside on the drive, their addresses, and their contents. To the operating system, the drive "looks" empty, and in a sense it is. All of the files that did reside on the drive prior to reformatting are still physically present, it's just that the space they occupy is now made available for other purposes as though there were nothing there. Reformatting destroys the indexes and records that made those files accessible.

In order to erase the data contained on the hard disk drive, a wiping utility has to be used that will essentially fill the disk with zeros. Often these utilities must be run several times in order to overcome the physics of disk drives, namely the magnetic properties of the disk platters. The defense agencies are required to wipe three to six times in order to ensure that the drives have been properly sanitized. Even with all of this caution, there special machines that can scrape a very fine layer of material off a disk platter and reveal a magnetized surface that can then be read by special forensic software. The only way to be truly sure that your data is unrecoverable is to physically destroy the device including burning it.

Answer 4

Reformatting means intentional total loss of data. You reformat your drive if you're having a problem you can't resolve such as particularly nasty virus or spy ware. you format a drive to make it ready to accept an operating system such as Windows. When you format, you choose a file format. Windows 98 and prior used FAT32, Windows NT required NTFS and on most popular OS's now you can choose which file system you prefer. Usually NTFS is the way to go because it offers the most efficient structure for your files. It is not a maintenance thing like defrag so you may never have to do it.

Answer 5

A hard drive is basically a metal platter that can be magnetized and looks like a dinner plate. (well almost). In order for files to be stored on it, the Operating System has to have a "road map" in order to find them. When you format a hard drive, it sets up a grid that can be used like a table of contents or an index to reference to grid location of the actual file. Re-formating will erase all files on the drive since it is re-establishing the grid and Table of contents.

Answer 6

when we use the word "format" it basically means to return to a clean state,in other words,formatting your hard drive will erase the drive of all data,however data can be retreived by expert technicians by using specialist software
you shouldnt have to format your drive unless your drive becomes infected beyond repair or you want to re-install windows ect
mp3 players and external hard drives can be formatted ,to format a mp3 player you simply look for the mp3 icon in my computer and right click and press format,the same method applies to a external hard drive
in the old days of windows 95,98,and m.e we used to use a tool in the start up disks called FDISK ,this allowed us to format discs and also partiton them(partition is when we split the drive into 2(c + d))
any more advice just let me know
good luck

Answer 7

you mark all existing data on the location you reformat as not occupied and set it up to receive new data. This does not make the data unrecoverable unless you zero fill the drive.

Answer 8

It means erasing the contents of your hard drive. Be careful, if you don't understand the reformatting, avoid doing it and you could find yourself out of your depth.

Answer 9

You clearing your PC down completely....no a good idea unless you know what u r doing

Answer 10

it means to erase every single data in your hard disk

it will be as a new hard disk