Have you ever wondered about the structure of a hard drive? How is writing / reading data from it, and what is disk formatting? Usually, all this remains outside the circle of interests of the average computer owner. Part of the reason for this is the reduction in the cost of modern equipment and its high reliability. "Childhood diseases", inherent in the early models, are in the past. For example, now, when completing work with the computer, there is no need to use the utility diskpark, correctly parked the head of the hard drive, since this function is now implemented on the hardware level of the device. Similarly, the formatting of a hard disk through a bios is interesting, first of all, by studying the milestones of the development of storage media based on magnetic disks. In the BIOS of modern motherboards there is no such possibility, but before that it significantly expanded the possibilities for working with the hard drive. The systems in which this paragraph was present were considered more technologically advanced. All of the above suggests that much has changed with regard to hard drives, but the beliefs and life experiences of many users have remained the same, do not keep up with progress. Let's look at some of these misconceptions.
The first error. It is known that formatting a disk is a necessary operation for all new hard drives. Perhaps someone else remembers how much time was spent breaking down through fdisk and creating a structure using format. In fact, all modern discs have already been formatted by the manufacturer - a real Plug & Play. The only thing that can be needed is to redistribute the free space between sections.
It is worth recalling that such a disk formatting. Under this operation we mean the process of creating (marking out) a certain magnetic surface structure, due to what programs can work with a hard drive. If the disk is not formatted, the usual way to access the HDD is not possible. In fact, the program manages the heads of the device and creates the so-called FAT file system, its FAT32 modification, or the new NTFS.
The fallacy is the second. Low-level formatting of the hard disk allows you to get rid of the bad sectors (English bad - "damaged"). Previously, this method really worked. Subsequently, the disk controllers became more and more "intelligent", so the banal formatting command could help fix only software errors, and the real hardware bad sectors could be replaced only from the reserve blocks (the process was controlled by the microprograms). Currently, some programs (MHDD, Victoria) allow you to force a surface scan with remapping.
Misconception is the third. Data exchange with a hard drive formatted in the NTFS file system is slower than with FAT32. Until recently, that was exactly the case, but now a huge hardware cache of modern hard disks (64 MB has become the norm) levels this difference. And the newest SATA-3 puts a fatty point in this dispute about the performance of file systems. Format the disk can be in any supported system, not worrying about the possible loss of speed. All these are remnants of the past.