1) It is preferrable not to have to format.
If u have to wipe your hard drive, a high-
level format is usually done. For example,
FORMAT /q C:. This option of format will
quickly format your hard drive. I think
this option just deletes files listed in
the FAT (it doesn't really format your HD)
The option FORMAT C: (the default) will
format your HD by writing 0's to it which
physically overwrites everything on the
HD except the MBR.
The option FORMAT /u C: will format your
HD (writing 0's) and also kills the MBR.
2) The format does not effect the perform-
ance of the hard drive.
3) No, I don't think so. The only thing I
can think of is the magnetic areas
physically on the HD. If any of those
areas degrade, then u start getting bad
clusters. The degrading usually happens
over time. This is normal.
4) The first thing u have to know is what
FDISK is. It stands for FIXED DISK. This
utility is used to create a single or
multiple partitions of any size on your
HD. U can use this utility to wipe your
HD, but once u delete a partition and
re-create it, u must do a HLF anyway
which will write over all of your HD's
data. So, I would say it is wiser to
just delete the unwanted file instead of
using FDISK.
