formatting and HD longevity

[archaeo]

I do a lot of video and dvd encoding, which means I often am ripping large files to one dedicated hard drive, then deleting them later. By delete, I mean I usually re-format the harddisk by either quick format or the longer, regular format process. Obviously the regular format takes a while longer when doing a 160 GB drive. I usually opt for the quick format because of this. But it did get me wondering if it was better to do the longer format once in a while, which may set up the drive better for future overwrites.

My question is whether there is any benefit or added longevity to the disk drive by doing it one way or the other, or mixing them up occasionally?

[jwg308]

Do you really mean "formatting"....how do you do that with all the other programs you should have on the HD? Shouldn't you have said "defragmenting" ...... and if its degragmenting, that should be done over any period of time with your Hard Disc.

[foxyshadis]

??? It's a second drive, not the primary.

No, quick formatting a scratch disk won't make any difference to longevity unless you want to make the files less easily readable to someone trying to dig into your drive's history. And if you do want that, you probably need file shredder software instead.

[archaeo]

No, quick formatting a scratch disk won't make any difference to longevity unless you want to make the files less easily readable to someone trying to dig into your drive's history. And if you do want that, you probably need file shredder software instead.


No, there's no need to make my wiped files less readable, so the quick format will suffice for overwrites. Glad to hear that.

thanks for the feedback