need to reformat a drive before installing an O/S?

[inflames988]

Ive heard a few things about reformatting a drive before installing an operating system. People have told me that in order to get it to perform as well as possible i should either:

1.) fully reformat the drive
2.) use a 'quick' format
3.) use DBAN then do a full format

which of these are ACTUALLY true in order to get he best performance? obviously the last is best for destroying data, but that's not necessary in this case. the drive is currently being used for storage, but will be reformatted and set up to be the main (operating system) drive.

[Dia]

Full format will write to each sector in the drive to see if the sectors are good. Whichever sectors prove to be bad sectors it will mark it as a bad sector so the OS doesnt attempt to store data there that will become corrupted or unrecoverable.

When installing a new drive you should always run a full format as no drive will come new without a few bad sectors, or many bad sectors.

quick format is for a drive you have already done a full format on, it will just format the drive but not check the sectors.

Data is never completely erased from a drive. Its impossible to erase data and write exactly over it to fully get rid of it.

[inflames988]

so the full format is a good idea, but i don't necessarily need to use DBAN (no sensitive data on there, plus im not getting rid of the drive anyway)

[glc]

If you have any doubts about the health of a drive, do a full format. Large drives can take a couple of hours.