Question: Every couple of months I find my computer becomes sluggish, so I format the hard drive then reinstall Windows to keep it running fast. I’ve been doing this for about a year without any adverse effects; but then, I was chatting to someone and they told me that formatting this often can damage the hard drive.
Is this true?
Answer: Formatting a drive is simply a matter of rearranging the bits, which is functionally no different from reading and writing files. I do agree with @soandos in that it is not a great way to maintain your OS, but it won’t harm your drive, or reduce it’s life significantly.