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Does formatting a hard drive get rid of the fragmentation?

Bjrocket
By Bjrocket
in Storage Devices
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I have a hard drive that is fragmented and don't care about the data on it, and was wondering if formatting the drive will fix the fragmentation. 

 

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Why not defrag it

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4 minutes ago, Bjrocket said:

I have a hard drive that is fragmented and don't care about the data on it, and was wondering if formatting the drive will fix the fragmentation. 

 

Thanks

Yes, fragmentation is a property of the data not the hard drive, the hard drive isn't fragmented, the data is fragmented, if you erase all the data there will be no more fragmented data on your drive.

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Technically yes and no. From the no standpoint all the data will still be there but the drive just won't know it's there. But for all the OS cares, the drive is "empty" so that's the yes side. Unless of course you properly wipe it and get rid of the data 100%. Then there's nothing to be fragmented.

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I got it from a mac computer and the owner said it was fragmented, and since the mac os formatting isn't compatible with windows, that is why I can't defrag it.

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2 minutes ago, Glenwing said:

Yes, fragmentation is a property of the data not the hard drive, the hard drive isn't fragmented, the data is fragmented, if you erase all the data there will be no more fragmented data on your drive.

Thanks!

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Fragmentation is very slow but it causes no data loss, while formatting is fast but you'll lose all data.

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