As HD's get larger...

[jaedaddy]

As HD's gets larger...reformatting is taking forever...even with split partitioning... reformatting takes beautifully 3-5 hours... thats including Xferring data into external before reformatting...

now i am a computer noob... is there a faster way? ... i fear when i read about these terrabyte HD's coming ... im sitting here reformatting a 1/3 of my monster drive... any way to bring down the timing? i initially wrote this thinking there was no way... but writing it i figured there is a way...

=)

jae
mlb

 

[pscowboy]

That's no time to take a shortcut. You want the format utility to check every bit for physical perfection. If it finds a bad spot, the sector gets marked, and won't be written to.

Let it run overnight.

 

[zjohnr]

As HD's gets larger...reformatting is taking forever...even with split partitioning... reformatting takes beautifully 3-5 hours... thats including Xferring data into external before reformatting...

First time through I thought you just needed to be told about using the "quick format" option of windows. (And if you're not using quick format ... do it. Or if you think a hard drive may have bad sectors, run the manufacturers extended test routines on it).

But now, reflecting on the part of your post I highlighted, it sounds like you're asking if there is a faster way to backup/restore. Only suggestion I could make there is to use eSATA to connect your external drive.

FWIW, making formats run faster and having less data to backup/restore is the primary reason I split my disks into a primary Windows partition of about 16GB and a data partition taking up the rest of the disk. If I need to reformat I only need to worry about the 16GB partition. The data, being in a separate partition, isn't touched and so doesn't have to be restored.

-john, the essentially clueless redundant legacy dinosaur

 

[the_stiffmeister]

IMO there's not a lot of point having a massive hard drive for your OS. Your better off having a smaller driver (up to 150GB) for the OS drive and large seperate drives for storage (which don't need regular formatting). Mobo's these days have so many SATA connections you might as well use them. If you need to re-install just unplug your storage drives (so windows setup doesn't screw the drive letters), format your small drive and install the OS and then plug in your storage drives back in and hey presto your machine is back in less time. Another good point already mentioned is you don't have to do a full format anyway (unless you think it's shafted).