Solid state drives (SSD, Solid State Drive or Solid State Disk) have been on the market for a long time. Their prices have become affordable for the vast majority of users. SSDs run fast and quietly and consume less power. But ordinary users have many questions about their maintenance, for example, is it possible to format an SSD.
Why format a disk?
In order for the operating system to be able to use the disk for storing files and installing programs, it must be formatted. Formatting is the process of partitioning a disk, creating a master boot record with a partition table. If you bought a new SSD, then formatting it is not only possible, but also necessary, because installation and reinstallation of the operating system is impossible without markup. The function of formatting the disk in this case is taken over by the operating system distribution kit. As you can see, there is not a word about deleting data here. Formatting only allows the system to work with the disk and the data on it. An example of formatting without deleting data can be given: changing the file system from HFS + to APFS with iOS 10.3 - the file system changes, but the data remains unchanged. However, this is a special case. In Windows, formatting implies a complete erasure of a disk or its partition from data.
Formatting to delete data
The term "format" is often used to refer to the procedure for deleting data from a disk partition.
Fast formatting takes place in a few seconds. This writes the boot sector and an empty file system table (for example NTFS) to the drive, and marks the disk space as unused. This does not delete data. After quick formatting, data on the HDD can be restored with special programs.
Full formatting involves overwriting the boot sector and an empty file system table, as well as zeros are written to all sectors of the disk, bad sectors are marked that are not used to write data in the future.
When formatting an SSD quickly, the system uses the TRIM command: the SSD controller overwrites all data on the drive and re-creates the sector list. In fact, for an SSD, fast formatting is the same as for a HDD - full format.
Full formatting of the SSD makes no sense (after all, a quick format erases everything), and this can even harm the SSD - it will slow down its speed. Why is this happening? The principles of operation of HDD and SSD are very different: in the case of solid-state drives, writing to all cells of zeros will mean that the cells are not empty - they are occupied by zeros. Therefore, before writing anything to the cells, the SSD controller will first have to delete zeros, and then write new information there. And this dramatically slows down the speed of the SSD.
Thus, it is necessary to format the SSD before installing the operating system, and use quick format to delete data from the SSD.
