How long will formating a comuter take?

Question

Also, is it possible to save all of your 'my documents'folder to a floppy disk?

Answer 1

I'll answer the second question first.

A floppy will only hold 1.4MB of data - very little space indeed and the floppy is really a redundant item these days.
Best to save your My Documents folder to a USB Flash Drive.
You will need to ensure your drive has enough space which will vary depending on how much and what sort of items are in your documents folder. EG under My Music you will have MP3s which typically are 4-5MB each , you may have DivX videos etc at around 350MB per hour show.
If you only have Word or Excel stuff then very little space would be needed and a floppy , if you have one , would be sufficient.

As far as formatting goes - mainly depends on what size hard drive is involved.
With Windows , formatting is the quickest part , installing the Operating System again , and then all the drivers needed for your mainboard , video card , sound card , printer etc etc is where the time comes in.
As a general rule , on Windows XP say , allow 2 hours for a full format and install of the O/S and drivers for a 300GB drive.
Of course , you will then need time to reinstall each of the programs that you use.
Compared with a typical Linux installation this is a long time.
With Linux , eg Ubuntu or OpenSuSE , a format and install including all drivers and programs can take between 20 minutes to less than an hour for the largest install , and no continual rebooting between program installs either.

Just allow plenty of time and before you start ensure you have all the discs and serials handy , and have done your data backup previously so you don't lose anything.

Answer 2

in case you do a "speedy format" it would not somewhat format the entire force, it "forgets" the information and as you fill up the force your self it over-writes each thing. a customary format can take in to an hour or 2 in case you have a much bigger no longer ordinary force with quite some counsel. If it gets caught and looks to freeze someplace purely restart the entire technique. If it gets caught back you the two: a million) Have a failing no longer ordinary force (maximum laptop shops will attempt it for you particularly inexpensively: stay removed from superb purchase's Geek Squad) 2) Have a undesirable installation CD

Answer 3

It depends on the drive (whether it's internal or external) and the size. You can save your documents to a floppy just as long as you do that before you re-format. Just a baseline number, a 500GB external USB 2.0 hard drive took 3.4 hours to format to NTFS. Internal drives go faster, much faster.

Answer 4

about 1 hour or so

if u dont have much in there