How safe is "quick format"?
August 17th, 2007
I just finished assembling the parts my brother's new computer and I am installing Windows XP right now, and for N-th time in my life I was asked by the Windows Installer whether I wanted a "quick" NTFS format or a regular one. For one more time, and for no particular reason, I chose the regular format. For a 320GB (~305GiB) Western Digitial drive, it took more or less two hours...
I know that a quick format would take only a couple of minutes. This time I seriously considered the possibility of wasting my precious time, all these years, with these slow regular formats. So, I did some research on the net, and I discovered that the major (if not the only) difference between quick and regular format is that regular format checks for bad blocks while quick format does not.
It seems reasonable that, in my case -with a new hard drive right out of its wrapper- it should be highly unlikely to have bad blocks on the disk. Thus, quick format would do just fine. If you're in doubt, too, I suggest that next time you will have to choose between regular and quick format, take in account the condition of your hard drive. If it is a brand new or less used drive, it would be fair enough to go with quick format. If you hard drive has been through a lot, maybe it should be wiser to go the regular way, but make sure you find something to keep you busy the next couple of hours...
I know that a quick format would take only a couple of minutes. This time I seriously considered the possibility of wasting my precious time, all these years, with these slow regular formats. So, I did some research on the net, and I discovered that the major (if not the only) difference between quick and regular format is that regular format checks for bad blocks while quick format does not.
It seems reasonable that, in my case -with a new hard drive right out of its wrapper- it should be highly unlikely to have bad blocks on the disk. Thus, quick format would do just fine. If you're in doubt, too, I suggest that next time you will have to choose between regular and quick format, take in account the condition of your hard drive. If it is a brand new or less used drive, it would be fair enough to go with quick format. If you hard drive has been through a lot, maybe it should be wiser to go the regular way, but make sure you find something to keep you busy the next couple of hours...
October 19th, 2008 at 12:33 pm I disagree.
Hard Disks are very advanced, fragile mechanic devices. You can destroy it with a good shake. In fact, it's not unusual a brand new disk having a few bad blocks.
See, you can save a couple hours by using the quick format, there's no doubt about that.
But if you want to be on the safe side (and that's always a good idea when it comes to your data), then you will probably want to get your new partition tested.
CHKDSK will make a quick analysis, but a thorough diagnosis will cost you a couple hours. And guess what? If it does find bad blocks, you will waste more than another couple of hours to solve the problem AND use a regular format anyway.
So I'd rather go through the pain of a long, slow first formatting process, since it will ensure that, unless the disk is really FUBAR, my partition will be really safe to use. "Fairly safe" doesn't cut it.