formatting 1tb drive

D

dgreger@homesc

i am in the process of re-formatting a 1 tb drive.
about how long is it supposed to take.

tia
 
S

Sunny Bard

dgreger@homesc said:
i am in the process of re-formatting a 1 tb drive.
about how long is it supposed to take.
Sounds like you didn't tick "quick format" ... I'd expect several hours!
 
P

Paul

dgreger@homesc said:
i am in the process of re-formatting a 1 tb drive.
about how long is it supposed to take.

tia
Let's guess at transfer rate is 60MB/sec. That would
be 16 seconds per gigabyte. Or 16000 seconds to do the
whole 1TB disk. Divide by 3600 gives 4.4 hours. Or could be
a little more or a little less. Let it finish.

Paul
 
K

Ken Blake

i am in the process of re-formatting a 1 tb drive.
about how long is it supposed to take.

It depends on the particular drive--its speed and the interface with
the computer it uses. But it should be several hours, no matter what.
 
L

LSMFT

Sunny said:
Sounds like you didn't tick "quick format" ... I'd expect several hours!
I've often wondered how a 'quick' format works. I assume it only sets up
the drive with partition info and the OS just formats as it lays the
data on the drive. Or else it doesn't check for bad blocks, mark any bad
blocks nor test it.
 
S

Sunny Bard

LSMFT said:
I've often wondered how a 'quick' format works. I assume it only sets up
the drive with partition info
Yep

it doesn't check for bad blocks, mark any bad blocks nor test it.
That's about it, modern drives do a lot of error detection/correction
and transparent re-mapping of failed sectors behind the scenes.

Quick format is also handy when your data is stored on a true RAID array
or SAN where formatting is a pure waste of time.
 
J

jbm

wrote in message
i am in the process of re-formatting a 1 tb drive.
about how long is it supposed to take.

tia

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The last time I formatted (long) a large drive was a 500Gb IDE (x7200) off a
L7VTA running an AMD 2400+. It took about 40 minutes. So a 1Tb drive should
take somewhat less than two hours. [Format + Win XP Pro installation took
just under an hour.]

However you don't say whether it's IDE, SCSI or USB. They'll all be
different.

jim
 
B

- Bobb -

LSMFT said:
I've often wondered how a 'quick' format works. I assume it only sets up
the drive with partition info and the OS just formats as it lays the data
on the drive. Or else it doesn't check for bad blocks, mark any bad blocks
nor test it.
"quick format" ... only works if same format before and after a format
It wouldn't matter if you're going from "no format" or from FAT to NTFS, it
would still need to do a FULL format , even if you check quick format
 

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