[SOLVED] Am I killing my Hard Disk ?

[Google Spider]

Hi

Will I ultimately kill my hard disk if I kept formatting my disk again and again ( to try different distros)? Is this true? I remember formatting the disk 5 times in December to get the right partitioning.(Trying to set up a dual boot for the first time)

How many times can we format a disk before it dies and should I stop doing this? How often do you format ?

I was going to install open suse on another partition but now I'm scared

[Kimm]

I had an old 60 Gb in my old computer that started making strange noise after I had reformated it several times (I cant know for sure how many times... I lost count).

I quickly replaced it though, so it didn't have time to break down. So, this is not a definitive answer, but I think repeated formating can damage the drive.

[eddietop]

Formatting a hard drive is just writing bits of information to the disk with the file structure information, your at no more risk then if you were using your hard disk store any other kind of information.

[aaaantoine]

I heard at one point that the partition table could break or become corrupt if changed too often, though I'm sure at this point you'd have to change your partitions hundreds of times for that to happen.

[karellen]

37289675 times (joking )

[solitaire]

Technically your probably doing more good than bad with all the reformatting.

Every disk get's bad sectors over time. When you reformat it the software usually checks for bad sectors and skips them ( so no data errors due to bad sectors!).

So the older the Disk the more life you'll give it if you do a full reformat every now and again...

[mips]

Amazing the amount of FUD out there.

Formatting a drive or partition actually involves less writing to the disk than normal everyday usage does. Formatting is nothing but writing to a disk so I honestly can't see how the hell it is bad for the hd.

[jrharvey]

There are limits to the amount of time that a hard disk can ultimately be reformated. My older 80G hard drive eventually became unusable because i reformatted windows sooooo many times (around 30+) because of studpid viruses. It was also my first time using linux and i must have reformated that about 10 times. Eventually my computer lost the ability to even write to the hard disk.

[jrharvey]

its possible it just got old but i believe its because i overwrote it sooo much

[Wobedraggled]

Anytime you write to the disk, you are stressing it, and all drives willl die eventually but formatting does no more than the usual writing to disk, and like it was said before, bad areas will be avoided.

If it's got moving parts, it'll break eventually, just a general rule of life