formatting/fdisking hard drives - takes long time

[zCypher]

This is an obvious fact that doesn't need to be stated, since hard drives have gotten so large lately, that anyone purchasing an oem hard drive having to format/fdisk will know the pains of it. However - do you all still use format/fdisk to accomplish this? Maybe I was out of the loop but I just realized how easy and quick you could do the same thing using an image with norton ghost (personal edition or whatever that small/basic free version is). You put this on a bootable CD... so all you do when you need a reformat is stick the ghost CD in your drive, reboot, and with 3 or 4 keystrokes and 2 seconds later, your drive is formatted and partitioned and ready to go. :Q

BUT - how come this method works - EVEN with brand new drives - with no problems, whereas you can't "quickformat" a new drive? Any technical explanations for this?

BTW, I just started my new job as a tech/sales rep at a local comp shop (which is why I just learned of this trick now)

 

[TheCorm]

Older versions of partition magic and fdisk do tend to be slow....but I have found that newer versions of partition magic and the built in formatting of windows xp/2000 to be quite brisk even with the larger drives.

Corm

 

[Isaiah]

I use Gdisk, and it's really fast. You can do a quick format on a new drive, unlike fdisk.

Download, Madboot it has gdisk, and a nice GUI menu thingy

-Isaiah

 

[TheCorm]

When you are installing windows XP, I take it you would select "Quick Format" for new drives and "Format" for drives where information was stored previously?

Jamie