When you format, does the information leave the hard drive?

Question

When you format, does the information leave the hard drive?

Answer 1

First ANY time you're making record device adjustments to a tension there's a probability of records loss. With this pronounced I even have used right here instructions many cases without ever having a concern. a million(a). in case you're working domicile windows XP click initiate then Run and kind CMD then click ok. this could take you to a command prompt then flow to step 2 a million(b) in case you're working domicile windows Vista click the initiating image and kind CMD in the quest, suited click the CMD that seems and choose Run as Administrator. you will likely could click proceed for the period of the UAC of domicile windows. this could take you to a command prompt then flow to step 2 2. kind "Convert x: /FS:NTFS" and press enter (do no longer contain the " marks) the place x: is the letter of your exterior tension this could artwork for any tension it incredibly is formatted NTFS or in different formats. no count if it incredibly is a device tension like your C: this is going to ask in case you go with for to do it the subsequent time you boot. basically say definite then shutdown and restart your computing gadget. warning although this could take a while for the conversion to end!

Answer 2

you should do a backup before formatting.... happy b'day lol

Answer 3

Data on a hard drive is saved in ones and zeroes. All reformatting really does is erase the partition table and master boot record. Say you have a 500GB hard drive, and you have it completely filled with pictures and other various documents. You go and format the drive wanting to sell it, all that is erased is the MBR and Partition Table. Without those, you could take specialized software and recreate those files based on the ones and zeroes that are still left on the drive. Or also use that software to read those ones and zeroes that were not written over by a simple format.

Answer 4

formatting is like an extreme deletion

data is "scrambled"

The files are recoverable until the data is overwritten

Answer 5

the data is never actually erased as such ... it is only overwritten ... that's how recovery professionals can recover lost or deleted data ... when you "delete" something all that happens in that your Operating System removes the reference it has as to where that data is stored (but the data is still physically there) and as you create new data it overwrites the area where your old data was. Professional "Data Destroyers" overwrite your entire drive with a series of 1 or 0 many many times making it extremely difficult to decipher the original data from the random 1's and 0's

Answer 6

The only thing that happens is the old files lose thier address and thats why cops can retrieve data from HDD's However if its been erased and recorded over atleast 7 times then that data IS NON EXISTANT after that.

Answer 7

ok trying to make this easy to understand:



when you format a disk the data is still there kind of. Just the computer is told its empty... so when you then fill it up slowly, its then overwriting the old data one bit a a time...



the only way to truly format a disk is to write new data over it - something like kill disk writs the disk full of 0'0 and 1'1 that mean nothing so the old data is overwritten

Answer 8

The data that is formated is just marked as free space so it can be over written programs like iolo search and recover can find deleted files.

Answer 9

Formatting scrambles the bits and bytes, some programs can get that stuff back, but not many.

Answer 10

Formating has become lazy for some reason nowadays, it always has been possible to fully wipe a disk but for some reason this isn't provided with Windows.



I think it is because hard disks are so large it would be slow. To write to a hard disk can be much slower as write speeds are slow compared with read speeds. A true format would write a blank pattern then re read to check if it is ok taking many times longer than the modern lazy format which essentailly erases only the contents table and merely checks every part of the hard disk can be read to confirm the avaialble space. This leaves every byte of your files intact and even the index in place, the computer just doesn't know it is there because the contents page is blank.This data will be gradually be overwritten as you use the disk but some may persistent for a long time.



This is why software can retrieve this data. It simply trawls the whole of the hard disk, essentially rebuilding the contents by reading the whole book. It can then instantly restore the files provided they have not be overwritten by a newer file.



You can get tools to do wipe. Proper certified data deletion is complex and slow requiring the data to be overwritten several times because it is sometimes possible to read the data after just one over write using specialised equipment.

Answer 11

You'd have to take it to a professional computer business to do that (if you can..I'm not sure), but generally reformatting a hard drive wipes everything away.