Low forma HDD.

[BoardBabe]

How do I format my drive properly in vista? seems only quick format is available during setuo.

[nitroshift]

Don't think you can. But you can always format it in pure DOS by booting off a floppy diskette.

[BoardBabe]

That is true, however quite few people (like myself) even have a floppy drive these days. Therefore i appriciated the function in XP during setup. Wonder why they did not include it in Vista.

[Biohead]

That probably the only complaint I have about setup. What about going to repair installation and then opening a command prompt window? Not ideal, but at least it should be able to be done.

[Spooky]

are you talking about a low level format? Thats a little different from a regular format. Most HD manufactures have a utility that will help out with a low level format. Have you tried the manufactures web site? I know WD for example had such a utility, and maxtor did.

But...I think you are talking about a regular full format, aren't you? If so, when you boot on the DVD there is a way to get to the command prompt, I think thru repair, can't remember right now but its around the forum somewhere. Anyway, after you get to the command prompt you can do a full format from there. Or if you have a WinPE CD you can boot on it and do a full format, or if you have something like bartsPE you can do the same.

Personally I use a WinPE 2.0 CD, its indespensible and I would highly recommend it. The WinPE is free for d/l from MS.

Edited January 29, 2007 by Spooky

[BoardBabe]

Excellent. I do mean "full format" yes. Still a mystery to me why MS left this out during vista setup.

[lowfwyr]

With modern hard drives low level format means write 0's to the entire hard drive. On old hard drives low level format would mean actually changing some of the magnetic surface of the drive and restructuring it. Trying that with a modern drive would render it dead. As for the "full format" option, the only difference between that and the quick format is that the full format tries to check the surface of the disk for errors.

Personal recommendations:

I don't usually worry about doing a low level format unless I suspect a virus or other infection that I want to make sure is gone (i.e. old school boot sector virus) or if you want to keep your average user from browsing files (it won't keep determined people from accessing your data). If your reasoning behind doing a full format is to make sure your disk is healthy before doing a clean install, I recommend using the manufacturers diagnostic tool and/or Spinrite. The checking that is done during the full format really isn't all that great and I've had many drives that had bad sectors or massive amounts of read/write errors pass that.

To sum it up: If your drive is suspect, there are more effective ways to take care of whatever your problem may be than trying to rely on the full format option. If your drive is not suspect, save yourself the time and just do a quick format. For the record, any used drive is suspect as far as I'm concerned until I check it out personally as I know it's possible for a drive to appear to be functioning just fine and still have a lot of problems and be near failure.

Hope some of this helps you out.

[x0rsw1tch]

There are several tools for "wiping" a drive. If you own a new version (6.x) of Webroot Window Washer, it has a built in utility to make a boot disk fir wiping. There is also:

Active@ DiskWipe: http://www.active-eraser.com/download.htm

DiskWipe: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediawipe/

[jaclaz]

...and don't forget good ol' DBAN:

Darik's Boot And Nuke:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

jaclaz

[BoardBabe]

The whole point of my question was to confirm wether Windows Vista setp has the option to full format (like in XP) or not And that is now answered, thank you!