Formatting a Hard Drive and Hard Drive Basics

The hard drive is the workhorse of your computer, but how does it actually work and how do you maintain it so it will last as long as possible and perform to its peak. Here is a basic description of how your hard drive works, and what you can do to make sure it keeps working the way it should.

How Does a Hard Drive Work?

When you save a file to your hard drive, it is magnetically recorded onto a platter (a flat disk) inside your hard drive. Most hard drives have several platters mounted on a spindle that allows them to spin as fast as 15,000 times per minute. Each two-sided platter is mounted on a single arm with a slider that lets the heads move across the surface of the platter to access data. It is kind of like how phonograph records are read by the needle but incredibly fast and back and forth.

The amount of data each platter can hold is usually measured in Tracks Per Inch, where a track equals one concentric ring around a disk. Because of the amount of data that can be stored in a single track, each track is divided into sectors, and each sector holds roughly 512 bytes of information. When you save data to the disk, it is referenced according to its track and sector

Hard Drive Organization

Occasionally your hard drive will make a whirring sound as it searches for a file. This is the sound of the platters spinning as the read heads zoom back and forth to "seek" the sectors where the data has been stored.

You can speed up this process by periodically “defragmenting” your hard drive. The Windows Disk Defragmenter utility reorganizes the scattered data on your hard drive to make your files run more efficiently. It also moves the files that you use most often to the beginning of the hard disk where they'll load faster.

To run Disk Defragmenter in Windows XP, follow these directions:

Click Start > Programs > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.
You should analyze a drive (volume) before defragmenting it. Because defragmenting can sometimes take hours, this tells you whether you need to take the time to perform this task. Click the Analyze button.
A drive must have at least 15 percent free space for Disk Defragmenter to completely and adequately defragment it. Disk Defragmenter uses this space as a sorting area for file fragments. If a volume has less than 15 percent free space, Disk Defragmenter will only partially defragment it. To increase the free space on a volume, delete unneeded files or move them to another disk.
Click the Defragment button.
To interrupt or temporarily stop defragmenting a volume, click Stop or Pause, respectively.

The bottom frame displays a graphical representation of the utilities progress.

Cleaning Up Your Hard Drive

Another powerful utility that comes with Windows is Disk Cleanup. This application allows you to easily sort through and delete unused and temporary files, freeing space on your hard drive and speeding up its operation.

To run Disk Cleanup in Windows 98, Windows Millennium, and Window XP:

Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools and select Disk Cleanup.
Choose the drive you want to scan from the drop-down menu, and wait while the program calculates how much disk space is available for cleanup.
On the Disk Cleanup tab, check the boxes next to the types of files you want to remove.
Temporary Internet Files are Web pages stored on your hard drive for quick access. Deleting these files will leave intact your Internet browser preferences and bookmarks.
Downloaded Program Files are Java and ActiveX applications downloaded from the Internet to view certain pages.
The Recycle Bin contains files you have deleted from your system. They are not permanently removed until you empty the bin.
Temporary Files are created by some applications to temporarily store data. Typically, the data is deleted when the program closes, and it is safe to delete these files if they have not been modified in over a week. Clicking the View Files button will display the files to be deleted in a separate window.
To remove Windows components or unused programs, click the More Options tab. Clicking the appropriate Cleanup button will open the Add/Remove Programs utility, where you can then select what you would like to delete.

The ScanDisk Utility in Windows

If you have ever turned off your computer without properly shutting down the system (or had to restart after a hard drive crash), then you have probably seen your computer run a utility called ScanDisk. ScanDisk checks the hard drive for errors and, if it finds any, marks the cluster of sectors containing the error as unusable, so that no data can be written to or read from that portion of the disk.

You can also run ScanDisk from within Windows. This allows you to do a more thorough scan of your hard drive and detect errors that might make it difficult or impossible to read or write to the disk.

Windows XP refers to ScanDisk as an "error-checking" tool; to perform error-checking, follow these directions:

Open My Computer, then select the local disk you want to check.
On the File menu, click Properties.
On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now.
Under Check Disk options, select the “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors” box.

ScanDisk should not take very long to run, and should probably be done every two or three months just to be safe. It will give you a report of the number and types of errors it has found, and can even automatically repair some of these errors. More serious errors can be repaired by reformatting the drive, if the errors are "soft" errors (which means that the magnetic signal on the disk is weak or the formatting is bad).

"Hard" errors, however, refer to actual physical damage to the disk, such as a scratch or a bump, and cannot be repaired. If you have a large number of hard errors on your disk, you will probably need to replace your hard drive.

The average life span for today's hard drive is between three and five years. Simple maintenance can keep your hard drive running smoothly well past the time it has become obsolete.

Step-by-Step Procedure to Format a Hard Drive

Before formatting your systems hard drive, there are few items you should do and have ready. Please read over the checklist below:

Backup any information that you feel is important. Formatting will in a sense erase your hard drive of all its data. It does not do this totally though and even after a high-level format data can be recovered. If erasing all data from your hard drive is required please visit UniRecovery data eraser section.
Gather all of your original CDs and disks if you have them, and any documentation that came with your computer.
Gather any additional software that you may want to reinstall.
Go to "Device Manager" on your system, copy down and make a list of the devices and/or the drivers that are being used.

Note : If your computer system came with a "Restore Disk" from the computer manufacturer, be sure to use it instead. The information on that disk should have everything you will need to repartition, format and reload software to its original condition.

If you are going to reinstall Windows XP from a CD, the installation instructions will guide you through re-partitioning and re-formatting the drive. The following instructions are for those who wish to go through the manual process of formatting a hard drive.

Once you feel comfortable that the above checklist is completed, then you are ready to format your hard drive and begin the next step of reinstalling your machine's operating system.

Starting with a Clean (New) Hard Drive

If you are beginning with a new hard drive, you can use FDISK, a DOS program that comes with Windows to partition the drive. The drive needs to have active partitions before it can be correctly formatted for installation of an operating system. You can partition by reinstalling Windows:

Start the Windows installation process by booting from your Windows CD.
Windows will ask you if you know that Windows is already installed. Say yes.
Delete the current partition and reassign the drives.

NTFS vs. FAT32

Confused on which drive format to choose? Here's a brief guide.

FAT stands for "file allocation table" and comes in two varieties: FAT16 and FAT32. FAT32 is an updated version of the old FAT16 system; it's more efficient and supports bigger hard drives. A computer running Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me can format a drive only using the FAT (16/32) file system.
NTFS is the other type of Windows file system. NTFS stands for "NT file system" or "new technology file system." Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP let you format a hard drive as NTFS.

Why Erase a Hard Drive?

Trying to erase all data from Windows based systems with commands related to data deletion, like Delete, Empty Recycle Bin, Clear History, Delete Temporary Internet Files in Microsoft Internet Explorer do not guarantee confidentiality of erased information or your Internet Privacy. Any intruder can still recover deleted files from your computer using low-level disk editors or latest data recovery software. You need to truly ERASE all data from your hard disk.

There are many stories of people who have purchased hard drives from auctions like eBay and found data. If you plan to sell a used hard drive, you need to fully erase it. Or, if you purchase a hard drive on the Internet, you need to know how to erase it so you can start with a clean drive. It is not difficult to erase a hard drive, but it is important.

Even if you've deleted files encrypted in Windows 2000, recovering of original file contents is still possible. The only way to completely ensure that files deleted are not recovered is to use a secure application that explicitly destroys or erases the data, overwriting and replacing hard drive surface information with some random information as Department of Defense recommends in DoD 5220.22-M / NISPOM 8-306.

Low Level Formatting a Hard Drive

Another way to completely erase a hard drive is to low level format it. In the old days, this used to be a common way of restoring a complete system. The BIOS routines on computers even included a program for low level formatting a hard drive. This is different now, however. Low level formatting is rarely recommended for erasing or repairing a hard drive.

Today, low level formatting involves writing zeroes (0's) or "zero filling" the drive. This is not a true low level format but does erase the drive because if everything on the drive is a zero, then nothing is there.

Manufacturers discourage low level formatting, but I have found it useful in certain situations where I want a complete and total clean hard drive before I install an operating system.

Once the drive is low level formatted, it must be partitioned and high level formatted to accept data. If you need routines for low level formatting you might try the links below to the hard drive manufacturers.

Starting with a Clean (New) Hard Drive

Start the Windows installation process by booting from your Windows CD.
Windows will ask you if you know that Windows is already installed. Say yes.
Delete the current partition and reassign the drives.