1T Harddrive

[doctorhardware]

When the hard drive is factory fresh then a quick format is fine. What I do is write zeros to the whole hard drive. Some times you have to write to the whole drive in order to remove any hidden partitions. I ran into this yesterday when repairing a desktop. I do not have a partition manager. It does take a while, but it does remove the hidden partitions.

[dr_ml422]

When the hard drive is factory fresh then a quick format is fine. What I do is write zeros to the whole hard drive. Some times you have to write to the whole drive in order to remove any hidden partitions. I ran into this yesterday when repairing a desktop. I do not have a partition manager. It does take a while, but it does remove the hidden partitions.

How do you go about writing zeros to the whole hard drive if I may ask?

[cynthia]

The old one was a Western Digital. Observed the speed in the window that shows up when you copy/move files in Windows.

The difference is that the old hd had only 16MB buffer, the new one 32MB.

[dr_ml422]

I hope that window shows up when I copy files because I just transferred some audio files to my 1 tb this morning and saw no window. Also that's funny. your old drive was wd and new one is seagate. except for the 32mb buffer it was faster than the wd. how old we talking here? my 1 tb is a 16mb wd and it was faster than the 16 mb 500gb seagate. I'll take the issue into consideration right now, but will have a definite pic when I get it back w/new firmware. Also did you remove the jumper that comes as default to 1.5 on the seagates? Or did they start sending them out as 3 already? that was in the works. they just didn't want to go through the hassle of going over thousands of drives to just remove the jumper on ones already made to go.

Cynthia so your new 1.5 tb seagate gave you a extra 26mb per second transfer rate than the wd you had previously. That's not even close to double of the wd transfer rate using double the amount of buffer from 16 mb to 32 mb. I think Chewy pointed this out in a previous thread about the increase in buffer or the jumper being taken off and the 3gb not really making a difference. Guess he was right if in fact this is correct. Hope you got a great deal on the 1.5 tb for the additional 16 mb of buffer. I decided to get the 16 mb buffer on the wd 1tb because Newegg wanted about $30 more for the extra 16 mb buffer. For that much of a increase in access rate as per your post, I don't think it was much of a difference.

[doctorhardware]

I use a Western Digital free program to write zero's to the drive. There is two options, one is a fast write, just like a quick format. Then there is the complete drive write. It is Western Digital diagnostics program that I use.

[dr_ml422]

I use a Western Digital free program to write zero's to the drive. There is two options, one is a fast write, just like a quick format. Then there is the complete drive write. It is Western Digital diagnostics program that I use.

So you use this procedure on brand new drives out of the factory, or just to totally wipe out anything on a old drive and then format it? I would think a new hd from the factory wouldn't come w/any hidden partitions, but that I'm not sure about at all.

[doctorhardware]

No I use it on drives that have been in use. It put the drive back to like you have just bought the drive.

[dr_ml422]

No I use it on drives that have been in use. It put the drive back to like you have just bought the drive.

Ok. Thnx.

[Chewy]

On an old drive like a dell or such, I use the windows cd or even xp to delete all partitions,
now I slow format a system partition if needed, not a bad idea even if you are intending to use the drive for data, having a future 15 gig partition might come in handy

Why slow format? It marks bad sectors and won't use them

I quick format all data partitions

[dr_ml422]

Chewy, you slow format a drive that has the system on it correct? In other words if xp is on that drive you slow format that drive, or just slow format it if you intend to have a partition on it as you suggested? You just can't format a separate partition on the same drive w/out formatting the whole thing correct?

[Chewy]

When I create new partitions on a drive, I will set a small system one, that is the one I slow format, always!

For just a data drive one large partition is sufficient and a quick format makes more sense, If I have any doubts then I slow format the drive or even run a low level disk diagnostic

[dr_ml422]

I got you. Google clarified the partition formatting thing also. Yes you can format a partition. Well hopefully I won't have to do a clean install any time soon. If I do I'll take the suggestion of slow formatting the system partition. Thnx.