Stopping HDD Windows Full Format half-way

[Caius Filimon]

Hi there! 

 

I am about to sell my desktop in a few hours, although I'm guessing that the formatting will not be done by then. The person buying it will most likely want to inspect it and see it running first; is there any way to stop the reset before it's finished? What would be the consequences?

 

Thank you very much for your help.

[Lenovo1984]

If you started the Windows reset, you won't be able to stop it without breaking Windows (from my understanding). If I were you, I'd just do a clean installation from scratch before selling it, if you have time. 

[BrinkGG]

7 minutes ago, Caius Filimon said:

Hi there! 

 

I am about to sell my desktop in a few hours, although I'm guessing that the formatting will not be done by then. The person buying it will most likely want to inspect it and see it running first; is there any way to stop the reset before it's finished? What would be the consequences?

 

Thank you very much for your help.

Take the hard drive, plug it into a different computer, initialize in Disk Management, quick format. 

[Spotty]

Let it run as long as it can, then if you need to stop it do so but run a quick format afterwards.
The formatting process shouldn't impact the windows install process at all, since windows hasn't begun installing itself during the format process. If it did try to install itself during the process, the data would be destroyed during the format.

The main risk you have will be that some of your data may be recoverable from the drive without letting it complete a full reformat.
The longer it runs, the more data that is overwritten. There's a pretty good chance that by the half way point most of your data - possibly not all of it - has been overwritten to the point where it is no longer feasibly recoverable through standard means, though I wouldn't recommend this as a practice.

I am guessing that it runs a quick format (deletes file table) prior to running a full format, but just in case it doesn't this is why I recommended running a quick format again after you cancel the full format.
 

[Caius Filimon]

17 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Let it run as long as it can, then if you need to stop it do so but run a quick format afterwards.
The formatting process shouldn't impact the windows install process at all, since windows hasn't begun installing itself during the format process. If it did try to install itself during the process, the data would be destroyed during the format.

The main risk you have will be that some of your data may be recoverable from the drive without letting it complete a full reformat.
The longer it runs, the more data that is overwritten. There's a pretty good chance that by the half way point most of your data - possibly not all of it - has been overwritten to the point where it is no longer feasibly recoverable through standard means, though I wouldn't recommend this as a practice.

I am guessing that it runs a quick format (deletes file table) prior to running a full format, but just in case it doesn't this is why I recommended running a quick format again after you cancel the full format.
 

Thank you very much for your detailed answer; it's much appreciated! Should I press down on the power button if need be, or turn off the power supply?  And thank you for reminding me to run a quick format afterwards too, just to make certain.

 

And do you happen to know if any browser passwords such as those stored on Chrome would be recoverable? Or for example the steam password. Other than that, I'd have no issue with anything being recovered, honestly.

 

Thanks!

[Spotty]

Just now, Caius Filimon said:

Thank you very much for your detailed answer; it's much appreciated! Should I press down on the power button if need be, or turn off the power supply? 

 

Thanks!

If you need to shut down the system in order to cancel the format process, use the power button on the case.
 

Switching off from the case sends a signal to the motherboard that the motherboard interprets as "Okay, shut everything down NOW". With the case power button it's the motherboard that is responsible for shutting down the system, which means it can safely instruct all the hardware to stop and shut down.

It's uncommon, but sudden power cuts to the system have potential to cause damage to the hardware. A particular concern is drives when they are reading/writing information, such as your HDD while its formatting.

[Caius Filimon]

Just now, Spotty said:

If you need to shut down the system in order to cancel the format process, use the power button on the case.
 

Switching off from the case sends a signal to the motherboard that the motherboard interprets as "Okay, shut everything down NOW". With the case power button it's the motherboard that is responsible for shutting down the system, which means it can safely instruct all the hardware to stop and shut down.

It's uncommon, but sudden power cuts to the system have potential to cause damage to the hardware. A particular concern is drives when they are reading/writing information, such as your HDD while its formatting.

Thank you very much for that! Very useful information that will stay with me for a life time now.

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

Let it run as long as it can, then if you need to stop it do so but run a quick format afterwards.
The formatting process shouldn't impact the windows install process at all, since windows hasn't begun installing itself during the format process. If it did try to install itself during the process, the data would be destroyed during the format.

The main risk you have will be that some of your data may be recoverable from the drive without letting it complete a full reformat.
The longer it runs, the more data that is overwritten. There's a pretty good chance that by the half way point most of your data - possibly not all of it - has been overwritten to the point where it is no longer feasibly recoverable through standard means, though I wouldn't recommend this as a practice.

I am guessing that it runs a quick format (deletes file table) prior to running a full format, but just in case it doesn't this is why I recommended running a quick format again after you cancel the full format.
 

Uhm... This is dangerously wrong.  A full format does NOT zero out a drive.  It only carefully erases and rewrites all address tables.  All of the data on a reformatted drive, quick or full format, is still recoverable. (Though it'll take more time without the tables, but every bit is STILL in there)

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Uhm... This is dangerously wrong.  A full format does NOT zero out a drive.  It only carefully erases and rewrites all address tables.  All of the data on a reformatted drive, quick or full format, is still recoverable. (Though it'll take more time without the tables, but every bit is STILL in there)

Been a long time since I've done a full reformat on a drive through windows tool - for some reason I thought it wrote 0 to all the sectors. Probably just confusing it with secure file erasure measures.
Thanks for the correction.

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Been a long time since I've done a full reformat on a drive through windows tool - for some reason I thought it wrote 0 to all the sectors. Probably just confusing it with secure file erasure measures.
Thanks for the correction.

It takes like as LONG as a zero out cause it is LOOKING at every sector but yeah, it's not a full zero out by a long shot.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

It takes like as LONG as a zero out cause it is LOOKING at every sector but yeah, it's not a full zero out by a long shot.

This is what probably threw me off to be honest, as I've done a couple of full drive 'secure erasures' (either psuedorandom or zero) and I know doing a 1 pass takes more or less the same time as a "Full Format". Been a while since I've done a Full Format as when I've needed to I've just wiped it as mentioned and then done a quick format.

Is there any particular reason why it doesn't do a secure erasure, or allow an option for it when choosing to reformat?

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

This is what probably threw me off to be honest, as I've done a couple of full drive 'secure erasures' (either psuedorandom or zero) and I know doing a 1 pass takes more or less the same time as a "Full Format". Been a while since I've done a Full Format as when I've needed to I've just wiped it as mentioned and then done a quick format.

Is there any particular reason why it doesn't do a secure erasure, or allow an option for it when choosing to reformat?

Because that's not what a full format is.  Formatting isn't about erasing data it's about building a file system and zeroing out the data is in no way a necessary function to that.  It'll erase any data that it HAS to to get the job done but that's it.