New Hard drive - formatting required?

I was asking myself the same question recently but with regard to a brand-new Seagate 1TB Expansion+ portable drive. I was surprised to see it formatted as exFAT and was thinking of changing it to NTFS as I was using it with XP machines. But it works ok so I decided to leave it as it is. It came with other files preloaded [~30mb] but just left 'em on it.

I was surprised to see it formatted as exFAT

Probably so you can use it with either Windows or MacOS straight out of the box.

You should format your drive with the optimum file system for your OS unless it is to be used on different devices then ExFAT is fine..

The reason that I asked as to formatting before use is because I have installed a brand new hard drive into an HP windows 7 PC.

Acronis images had been created previously for the previous drive and had been used to reinstall when problems had occurred, this had worked every time.

Upon installing the new hard drive and starting the Acronis programme from an Acronis CD it just refused to reinstall the Acronis image.

I then tried to install from the original HP recovery discs (now 10 years old) with the same result. Unfortunately the owner of the PC was by my side continually offering advice(?) and some of the dialogue box responses were not noted. Under normal circumstances, were I doing this on my own those responses would have been noted!

Any suggestions out there?

Is it considered prudent to always format a brand new hard (main) drive before installing software?

As most new hard drives come without any formatting at all you always need to initialise it, partition it (if required) and then format each partition. If the drive is not formatted it is not usable.

Upon installing the new hard drive and starting the Acronis programme from an Acronis CD it just refused to reinstall the Acronis image.

I then tried to install from the original HP recovery discs (now 10 years old) with the same result.

In that case reformat it to NTFS and see if the image will restore.

I took the brand new hard disc out of the PC and inserted into a powered caddy, then coupled that to my PC, the drive started up but is not seen by the PC.

Checked the caddy for functionality before and after and it performed correctly so my thinking is that the brand new hard disc is faulty?

Thoughts?

I took the brand new hard disc out of the PC and inserted into a powered caddy, then coupled that to my PC, the drive started up but is not seen by the PC.

Had similar problem with new hard drive. When I took it back to shop the technician tried it out on his test rig and it worked ok. He said that it might be a 'power problem' with my PC. I was given a replacement drive [Toshiba] which worked ok at home.

couple it back to the PC make sure al cables are connected correctly

If it cannot be seen in disk management then its likely faulty.