There's nothing like starting off with a clean slate. Whether it's a new car
right off the lot, fresh sheets in your hotel room bed, or a pardon from the
state governor for your 14th speeding ticket. But your driving record isn't
the only thing that could use a fresh scrubbing. Reformatting the storage
drive in your computer or mobile device could make your life easier as well. But
what exactly is formatting? Well, just like a database is kind of useless
unless it has some sort of system for organizing all of your data, a disc
isn't very useful unless it has a file system where it can tell your computer
where everything is physically located on the drive. When you format your hard
drive, SSD, USB stick, or whatever else, the disc is first partitioned, meaning
that the disc is given a beginning and an end to mark the areas where the
operating system can access it. Then a file system is placed onto the disc to
allow it to organize its contents. Usually NTFS for Windows drive or FAT32
or XFAT for a removable flash drive. But formatting does more than just prepare a
disc for use. If there was anything on the disc before formatting, it gets
erased during the formatting process. Because formatting involves erasing the
tables that give locations to all of the files on the disc, meaning your
operating system will see all the previous data as free space that can be
overwritten. And although this is obviously a problem for people who want
to reformat a disc because it isn't working properly, but would also like to
keep the data, it also means that reformatting is a great way to
completely nuke a drive really quickly. Often times, this is done when a
computer is infected by particularly determined malware, which is difficult
to remove with anti-malware applications and can leave lasting damage to crucial
operating system files, even if you do manage to get rid of it. By formatting
an infected drive, you nullify its ability to execute any malicious code.
And since formatting erases the boot sector that tells your PC to load up
your operating system, it's also a great way to defeat the more exotic viruses
that infect the boot sector directly, which can give you a truckload of
problems. Formatting is also a good way to remove pre-installed software from a
computer you bought off the shelf. often referred to as bloatware since it tends
to hog up system resources and often provide questionable at best utility.
Bloatware can be difficult to remove completely. So many people who purchase
pre-built PCs, especially laptops, like to format the included drive right out
of the box and do a clean operating system install. And if you're suffering
from Windows bloating, where Windows just kind of piles up background
processes and registry errors over time, formatting can serve a useful method for
spring cleaning. Do keep in mind however that formatting does have some
limitations. Doing it to permanently erase data beyond recovery is just a bad
idea as formatting doesn't obliterate this data. It just marks it as free
space and it can be overwritten later on and can still be recovered by using
third-party software. There's a bunch of them out there. So using an overwrite
utility such as DBAN or Derek's boot is just a much better idea. Formatting also
won't help you if the problem you're having lies within your PC somewhere
else, such as in the case of a super corrupted BIOS or a terrible virus that
gets into your freaking firmware. And while fir formatting can give you a
clean slate to work off of, it doesn't make your drive like new. Though a full
format in Windows can check your drive for bad sectors to at least tell you
whether or not you might need a whole new disc drive to solve your problems.
But formatting, like we said earlier, remains a very valuable tool if you're
drowning in malware or bloatware or whatever. Just remember it is a bit of a
nuclear option. So don't push the red button unless you're sure it's okay to
scorch the earth or in this case just your data. Squarespace is the simple,
beautiful, and powerful tool for building your website. They have 24/7
live chat support just in case you run into any problems. It only costs eight
bucks a month, and if you sign up for a year, you get a free domain. has
responsive design. So if you make a really cool pretty thing that looks good
on a desktop, it will also look on a laptop, tablet, phone, whatever. They
have a commerce module so you can sell stuff. They have a cover page thing so
you can make beautiful looking onepage websites if you need to make like a
modern resume or something like that. You can start with no credit card
required today so you can start immediately building your website with no obligation. When you decide to sign
up for Squarespace, make sure that you use offer code Lionus and get 10% off of
your first purchase. Squarespace. Build
it beautiful. All right, guys. Dislike the video if you disliked it. Like the
video if you did happen to like it. Leave a comment down below if there's
anything you would like us to cover on TechQuicky. Uh, sometimes it's hard to
think of ideas. Check out Channel Super Fun. We're doing
cool stuff over there. We're always doing cool stuff over there. And don't forget to get subscribed to this and
Channel Super Fun.