Why Do I Need to Full Format a BRAND NEW Hard Drive?

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_TheD0ct0r_

_TheD0ct0r_

Commendable
Apr 19, 2016
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So I just got a new hard drive and was looking up tutorials for if I need to do anything with software to get the hard drive ready to use. Everyone keeps saying the same thing: "Spend a few hours doing a full format of the new drive. Quick format causes issues".

But Im sitting here thinking to myself, whats the point if its a BRAND NEW DRIVE? Theres nothing on the hard drive! So why format it?

Thanks.
 
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Ok good. It just seems weird when you google "Format NEW hard drive" people say to format it when its new :/
 
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Performing a full format is generally a waste of time. Others may argue that you need to zero the drive for security reasons or other purposes, and also to check for bad sectors, but that's not guaranteed to happen when performing a full format anyway, so don't do it for those reasons unless those are the results you want, and you know the particular version of the software you're using to format with is going to perform those actions.

Also, hard drives have had intelligent bad sector recovery for at least fifteen years now, so Windows may never even see and report bad sectors on a hard drive until the drive has used up it's allotment of extra sectors used in remapping bad sectors.

If you want to see if your drive is close to it's limits, look at the S.M.A.R.T. data.

A quick or fast format is all you need and will not cause problems.
 
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But I dont need to format at all correct? As its a new drive?
 
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You need to partition and format the drive, otherwise it's just blank space.

Hard drive manufacturers perform a low level format which puts tracks and sectors on the platters, but otherwise the media is in a blank state. Windows, Linux, OSX, etc. all have various file formats that they support and the manufacturers don't know which particular file format you will need, so it's up to the end user to partition and format the drive.
 
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When you set up the drive you will need to partition the drive and you will have the option to quick format, its very fast, do that. Do not waste the time to do a full format.

Quick format does not cause issues, I've done this probably thousands of times with 0 problems.
 
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Can you give me or direct me to a concrete, easy, straight forward tutorial on how to partition and quick format a new drive?

 
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Tom's has one for you

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2569580/make-partitions-windows.html

This is assuming you have Windows 10
 
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depends on drives purpose and what OS you using

If its a new windows install drive, don't need to do a thing, just put drive in PC, run installer and windows works it all out. This has worked like that for last 3 versions of windows.

if its storage, you need to do the steps in link above.

we just won't talk about RAID or cache drives,,, or even the storage feature in win 10, though it appears to just be raid again: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/12438/windows-10-storage-spaces
 
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When you rely on the Internet (scary), u have to carry an healthy dose of skepticism, because everything is somebody's opinion, AND pay attention when was the comment posted. When/how to rotate your tires 20 years ago may not be the same thing you do today.

During my last upgrade I did go into the trouble of doing a long format, I forget why it compelled me to do so, maybe I was spoked by 2 Seagates dying on me right after their warranty expired (of course!), but I can't tell somebody to follow me. It took a whole day, but it's a once-off. But whatever man, if you don't, don't look back. :)
 
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Im using Windows 7
 
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