first deep format ... chkdsk threw up errors for first time ... worried

catalina66

basmic wrote: »

That part I've highlighted in part, is the one to watch when your drive is wearing out.

If your drive were to wear out, you'd probably find bad sectors sprouting up here and there. But you have none, so I wouldn't worry. Personally I wouldn't worry if you had a couple, just as long as it never increased all the time - ie: 3+ sectors/year.

If you want to really to test your harddrive's fitness, find out the manufacturer of the drive - ie: Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi/IBM, Samsung or Fujitsu. Go to there website, in the support section you will find a diagnostic tool for the drive - run the thorough option of that.

Hi Basmic, many thanks for advice. Great reassurance. Will go to Seagate's site and get that diagnostic tool running!

Cheers, Cat :beer:

daily_2

If your pc crashes with a blue screen due to a rogue driver, you will get logical errors on the drive, neither mean the pc or drive are on their way out. Instead of reinstalling windows every 6 weeks, create a disk image of a working system, and use it only if you have problems. You are doing far too much maintenance, concentrate on not installing rubbish on it in the first place.

catalina66

daily wrote: »

If your pc crashes with a blue screen due to a rogue driver, you will get logical errors on the drive, neither mean the pc or drive are on their way out. Instead of reinstalling windows every 6 weeks, create a disk image of a working system, and use it only if you have problems. You are doing far too much maintenance, concentrate on not installing rubbish on it in the first place.

Hi daily, I was going to say thanks until the presumption about me installing rubbish on my machine! I keep it really clean is what I'm saying all through the thread, and that it was just these couple of problems, albeit worrying ones, that were the issue. I do appreciate you explaining something I didn't know though ... had no idea that if a BSOD occurs get logical errors on the drive, and that it doesn't mean the drive's on the way out. Thanks for that, as that's great reassurance. :beer: I can't help but think that Kontiki caused the BSOD's, as it was right after uninstalling it that they occurred. (Didn't know about KClean then ... never installing Kontiki again anyway)

Cheers, Cat

aliEnRIK

catalina66 wrote: »

Hi aliEnRIk, thanks. I was a bit stunned there, and had a look around, and am reading all kinds of things everywhere, a lot of conflicting info, some saying deep formatting can reduce the life of the pc, others saying other stuff! I have registered that it's better to defrag and do better mainenance rather than just 'wipe' everything, unless really necessary, but then other info is saying quick formatting is no different to reading and writing to the drive generally.

Needing to question a bit; not looking to cause any hassle, as I appreciate you taking the time to reply ... all the info is so conflicting. First time I've ever done a deep format on this pc, in 3 years and 4 months ... and had no problems with it before doing this!

Cheers, Cat

Speaking from personal experience ive had the OPPOSITE happen. Ive tried 3 QUICK formats to reinstall XP and al 3 had problems so I FULL format everytime first.

But you dont need to format for general storing of files (Apart from when you first get it)
Simply delete them and jobs a topper

basmic

My general rule of thumb is to initially perform a full format on any single new harddrive - second-hand or not, just for peace of mine.

From then on, when I reinstall (usually every 6-12 months) I just do quick formats. If I've time to spare, or I'm going out, I'll run the thorough test in the manufacturer's tool. I'd sooner trust the tool, than format - and it will at least throw up an error code to give to the manufacturer, if the drive is under warranty.

andy2004

catalina66 i would suggest you get some imaging software like acronis true image which will take a image of your drive / partition and back it up then when you want a clean install, use the backup image you created to wipe out the old data and reinstall.
Use acronis to create a backup will take around 3-4min depending on how much data is on the partition and the recovery image back to hd will also take around 3-4min, instead of a complete format and install which on average with xp takes around 45min + time to install your drivers and other software.
I havent formatted my computer in 2 years using this method.
how i do it.
installed xp + service pack 3, installed all drivers for all hardware, programs i use. create backup with installed acronis
3 months time, when i've downloaded new updates for my programs, aka CCLeaner, flashfxp, firefox, etc.
do a recovery using the first backup.
that wipes out any rubbish i've installed and havent removed correctly.
install new programs, and create new backup. wait 2 weeks before deleting the old backup.
repeat usually every 3months. i backup on a weekly basis, but i always keep 4 backups.
a master, and 3 inbetweens. The inbetweens get deleted, so 4 is 1, 5 is 2, and 6 is the new 3. when 4 is create file 1 gets deleted. and so on.

daily_2

Rubbish wasn't meant to be offensive, just a general term to cover whatever you are trying to undo by doing a format every month. If you reinstall the operating system every month, and don't install "rubbish", it shouldn't get chance to get "dirty".

Macrium reflect free, driveimagexml, clonezilla are examples of free imaging software.

aliEnRIK

Cat ~ ARE you actually reinstalling the operating system or is it just a spare hard drive?

catalina66

Hiya aliEnRIk ... surreal isn't it, lol. Great that the full format works fine for you. Really glad posted the thread, as everything's going to end up easier. And with Andy's suggestion of doing a disk image, I'd coincidentally just looked on Giveaway Of the Day, and it's Paragon Drive Copy 9.0 Personal SE (English Version) for about the next 12 hours. It'll be so much easier to not format and to just have everything really clean.

Am understanding that Paragon Drive Copy can be used with Dell pc okay? and I can make a disk-set. Also just read on the same Giveaway of the Day page that Seagate DiscWizard software includes a copy of Acronis TrueImage! Looking at them both.

:beer:

Hiya Basmic ... thanks; that sounds a great idea to just do a format half yearly or once a year, and trusting the manufacturer's software, definitely. Life will be so much easier, lol! Really pleased to have found the couple of leads to follow as I've said above, and am going to do a quick format later. Just wanting to first check here that I'll be okay to use either of these programs, or the free ones I've just noticed Daily's added, on the Dell Dimension 1100.

:beer:

Hiya Andy 2004 ... many thanks ... I didn't realise how quick doing an image and loading an image was. That will be SO much better than the laborious format and reinstall! Many thanks for explaining how you do things ... it's genius, and I'm really glad to be changing from doing all these formats!

:beer:

Hiya daily and many thanks for those links to the free programs. Much appreciate it.

:beer:

Hi again aliEnRIk ...I've only got the one drive, so it's just the operating system. I'm going to have to do a quick format to sort those 37 orphan things, but then am looking forward to doing the image. Just want to check first about doing this with Dell machine.

:beer:

Also hoping I can use DVD-disks to create backup set, as the CD bit of the drive isn't playing nice any more!

catalina66

This is probably a dumb question, but I'm reading the Seagate DiskWizard info and it supports 4 operating systems, one being XP Pro x64 Edition ... I don't know if my version is 32 or 64 ... I'd presumed 32 ... and creating the bootable CD might be a problem ... I can try it out again, as occasionally after a format, the CD function resurfaces briefly, lol.