quick format

[rookie1010]

Hi
What is quick format? and why does it take less time to format than the normal format?

 

[Spud5437]

As far as I know a quick format wipes the drive clean and a full format write 0Â’s to ever sector. A quick format should work if all you want to do is delete everything and install your OS again.

 

[TheMajor]

quick format only wipes the file allocation table

 

[rookie1010]

i was trying to format my external drive since one of the entries was not readable because of some reason.
i guess the file was corrupted, if just the file's entry is removed in the table, the data location's corresponding to the file will not be filled tilll those locations are needed.

is there any way i can free those locations right now other than the main format process.

 

[TheMajor]

maybe with a disk-editor or something..but it requires some knowledge...

anyone knows?

 

[bobojuice]

You can check out SDELETE. It's supposed to clean up all the unused space on a hard drive....

 

[Demalii]

I used a program I think it was called EasTec format or something of the sort.. used that because typical windows format wasn't cleaning the lost space on my drive.. The program had like 10 options for formatting.. I used the one that wrote 0's and 1's I think and I got like my missing 30Gigs back.. boy was I missin them =p

 

[rookie1010]

hey what does lost space mean?
sdelete seems to be a CLI based utility, i like using the mouse
all these CLI based programs are developed for people with IQs much higher than me

 

[OIDanTheManIO]

Quick format is basically formatting done faster than a mormal format. Of course there are probably differences between the two other than just how long it takes to format something.

 

[koldapu]

Quick format is basically formatting done faster than a mormal format. Of course there are probably differences between the two other than just how long it takes to format something.

really? quick format is faster than normal? naw, thats a lie!

lol, jk jk jk