Is a Full Format Necessary?

I like to mess around with new software pretty often, so I tend to do reinstalls pretty regularly.  While I don't think I'm infected (I'm pretty **bleep** retentive about what I download), I do try to clear out the drive before I do one.

 

As Windows 7 does a format when it installs, I'm curious if formatting the drive beforehand provides any real benefit over just running bootrec.exe /fixmbr /fixboot before doing an install to reasonably ensure a clean drive.  I think it does, but as I'm no expert I'm curious what everyone else thinks here.

 

Reason I ask:  I'd much rather reinstall from the system image I keep on a partition of the drive than doing a complete re-install :)

I have always carried out reinstalls of my O/S as a matter of habit....but since Windows 7 I have done it less frequently as I find Windows 7 very well behaved in general  !

In previous versions of Windows , (especially Windows ME )  I found  a "Clean canvass" approach cured many annoyances and at the same time ensured a "clean slate " as far as virus / malware was concerned !

 

As for "Full Format " ....I myself have found that the quick format has always been sufficient , and have not had any indication that not doing a "full format " has ever had a negative effect on the reinstall process at all .

 

I use a "multi boot " set up and use Acronis True Image as my tool of preference ...and as Hugh mentioned .......the scrambling of the MBR is usually at the back of my mind , and therefore I have avoided the option to restore the MBR via Acronis...... I too am always wary of the possibility of MBR issues :smileywink:

 

In spite of being very careful in the past.....I have had the unpleasant surprise on reboot , to see an error message relating to boot problems which were caused by various problems...but more so  with the " GRUB" component when dual booting with Linux distro's !

The old "boot .ini " was comfortable to work with and made boot problems much easier to deal wth ...but since Windows 7 changed the way the boot process is handled ...I now treat the MBR with great respect !

 

For me ..Windows 7 has been a great success ...and I am extremely happy with it...but the MBR could have been less convoluted in my opinion .

 

In order to sidetrack the issues I had with Windows MBR and its interaction with "GRUB " ...I now use Linux Live USB creator and install my various Linux trials on USB drives....I set my BIOS priority to "boot first " from any inserted USB stick ...and that resolves any issues with the main MBR having issues with a Linux bootloader !

My Windows systems boot happily ...and if I want to play with Linux...I just pop in the appropriate USB stick!

You might find Neosmart's free EasyBCD utility useful.

 

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 

 

It's up to 2.1 now

 

It makes working with BCD even easier than working with boot.ini <s>

 

It backs up if you want it to and can repair BCD or MBR -- saved me headaches the othe day .....

 

In the Useful tools section of it there's a tiny applet you can download that is called iReboot that I love. I install it on each of my OS's and then when I'm doing something with one of them that is not the default I just click on it and select the OS I want to reboot to the next time -- eg the non-default -- and it skips the boot manager and comes back to where you were, just that one time.

 

Great since you don't have to focus to catch the boot menu and can even go to the bathroom without ending up in the wrong OS <g>

For info, some of the latest rootkits/bootkits are sometimes surviving a low level format.  It isn't as easy as it used to be to fix things with a reload or a format in the instance of infection.

 

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/New-malware-has-arrived/m-p/131359/message-uid/131359/highlight/true#U131359


delphinium wrote:

For info, some of the latest rootkits/bootkits are sometimes surviving a low level format.  It isn't as easy as it used to be to fix things with a reload or a format in the instance of infection.

 

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/New-malware-has-arrived/m-p/131359/message-uid/131359/highlight/true#U131359


Fair enough, but if Im clearing the MBR (using a bootrec.exe /fixmbr from the Win7 Install Disk), I'm not sure where such a rootkit would survive otherwise.

A belated thank you for the "EasyBCD " info and link Hugh ..... Have downloaded it  and popped it in my "toolbox" ...very , very handy util...thanks again ! .......Ed

I like to mess around with new software pretty often, so I tend to do reinstalls pretty regularly.  While I don't think I'm infected (I'm pretty **bleep** retentive about what I download), I do try to clear out the drive before I do one.

 

As Windows 7 does a format when it installs, I'm curious if formatting the drive beforehand provides any real benefit over just running bootrec.exe /fixmbr /fixboot before doing an install to reasonably ensure a clean drive.  I think it does, but as I'm no expert I'm curious what everyone else thinks here.

 

Reason I ask:  I'd much rather reinstall from the system image I keep on a partition of the drive than doing a complete re-install :)

You're welcome --

 

There's some remarkable free stuff out there. I've been using this for some time http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html and thoroughly recommend it.

 

Reminds me of Partition Magic .... I see you can even hide partitions ....

 

Piriform have some useful stuff and if you go to the download page for one of their utilities and scroll down to the very bottom you'll find a link to Builds for that product and included there is a portable version ..... Took me ages to find those.

 

Of course you use Irfanview ....

Hugh wrote

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Reminds me of Partition Magic .... I see you can even hide partitions ....

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Ahh , yes........Powerquest Partition Magic ...that served me well too ! ...must be over eight years now since the acquisition by Norton ?

Thanks for the other link to the partition tool , and also the mention of Piriform b.t.w .....Piriform always have offered  very well crafted software ......and I found that their "Speccy " and "Recuva " are very useful tools also !

                                                                                                                                                                           Ed

Yes -- I use all lthe Piriform stuff and love the information that Speccy gives.

 

I wish I could find a really good tool to examine the specification of an optical drive -- I know something in Nero can do this but I'd rather something like Speccy. I've someone wondering if their drive can do LightScribe / Blueray stuff like that.

 

I used to have a very good tool from Plextor before they were taken over -- came from a company in Germany and it told you everything including firmware version and so on ....

 

Speccy doesn't say very much