Dual Boot Failed

**Alethi0** · August 25th, 2009

I'd just like to confirm formatting killing laptop hard drives. I think I've formatted mine about 10 times since I bought it a year ago and it failed last week. Anyone know a good affordable replacement hard drive for a Fujitsu Siemens Li 2727?

**P4man** · August 25th, 2009

Originally Posted by Alethi0

I'd just like to confirm formatting killing laptop hard drives. I think I've formatted mine about 10 times since I bought it a year ago and it failed last week. Anyone know a good affordable replacement hard drive for a Fujitsu Siemens Li 2727?

I know a very affordable one: a Fujitsu Siemens Li 2727. Your should still be covered by warranty. AFAIK, they have 3 year warranty. (and formatting 10x won't void that

)

edit

ops, you gave the laptop number, not the hdd. You can check here how much warranty you have on the hdd should the laptop no longer be under warranty:

http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/c...y/summary.html

and thank god for belgian law obliging a minimum 2 year warranty

**presence1960** · August 25th, 2009

Originally Posted by Alethi0

I'd just like to confirm formatting killing laptop hard drives. I think I've formatted mine about 10 times since I bought it a year ago and it failed last week. Anyone know a good affordable replacement hard drive for a Fujitsu Siemens Li 2727?

So tell me in precise terms how you arrived at the comclusion that formatting is what killed your hard disk. Do you have any solid evidence or is this just conjecture?

Hard disks are like any other piece of machinery that has moving parts. They can give out at any time. Some people have brand new hard disks fail after a week or two. Is that because of formatting?

Again formatting will not harm your hard disk. Your disk is made to perform read/write operations many, many times over. But the fact that the hard disk is comprised of separate parts which move is the reason most failures probably occur. There are other reasons: temperature, banging the hard disk, etc. it is like any other machine.

**Kinetic_lord** · August 29th, 2009

Originally Posted by presence1960

That is not true, where are you getting this info about formatting?

From my laptop, he tells this to me every time i start my PC:

"Backup your data, a crash might be iminent, press F1 to continue"

...so, i didnt smashed it or something, only formats can screw it.

**presence1960** · August 29th, 2009

Originally Posted by Kinetic_lord

From my laptop, he tells this to me every time i start my PC:

"Backup your data, a crash might be iminent, press F1 to continue"

...so, i didnt smashed it or something, only formats can screw it.

That message does not mean formatting has done the damage. what it may mean is your hard disk is about to fail. Formatting will not harm your healthy hard disk. Your hard disk is made to perform many, many read/write operations in it's lifetime. Which BTW in case you didn't know one of which is a format. You are misinterpreting the message and spreading false info. I suggest you investigate hard disks and how they operate. You have no evidence to say formatting ruins hard disks. Now if your disk is in bad health formatting it may be the last thing you want to do to it. But it is not the formatting that is the cause of it.

I still have a 5 year old IDE Seagate 160 GB that has been formatted I can't tell you how many times because of windows issues. It is in my machine now and still going strong.

**P4man** · August 30th, 2009

Originally Posted by presence1960

You have no evidence to say formatting ruins hard disks. Now if your disk is in bad health formatting it may be the last thing you want to do to it. But it is not the formatting that is the cause of it.

+1

(quick) formatting as far as a drive is concerned, is in no way different to writing a ~100Mb file. All that is done is a partition table that is being written and a file allocation table. Those are just "files", the only difference is that our operating system interprete them differently.

Doing a full format is no way different as writing a file as big as the partition. Running windows for a day will probably cause more wear on your drive as more data will be read and written written to swap compared to even a full format. A harddisk really doesn't "know" the difference between writing a partition table (=format) or writing a file, and the effect on the drive is exactly the same.

What may case the confusion perhaps, is a low level format. something you actually can't even do anymore with modern drives without specialized tools.

**Bartender** · August 30th, 2009

Originally Posted by Kinetic_lord

From my laptop, he tells this to me every time i start my PC: "Backup your data, a crash might be iminent, press F1 to continue"

You laptop actually pops up with this message? Where's the message coming from? Is it a Windows error message, or does it appear to be from a utility the manufacturer installed, or what?

Kinetic, I have to agree with the general consensus. Wrong conclusion, based on insufficient evidence. Are you sure that this is even a HDD error message?

If it were me, I'd want to get to the bottom of this. Find out what's generating the message, and what to do about it. If it IS the HDD, you don't want to keep using it until one morning it's done and your data is for all intents and purposes irretrievable.

EDIT: If I'm not mistaken, there are several diagnostic tools available. I think you can download a utility from the HDD manufacturer that can be burnt to a CD (like making an Ubuntu install CD). Then spin the CD, test the HDD, see what it says. If it truly is failing, it's gonna crap out on you soon whether you format or not, don't you think?