FORMAT Page:
Formatting is the process of writing marks on the magnetic media that are used to mark tracks and sectors. Before a disk is formatted, its magnetic surface is a complete mess of magnetic signals. When it is formatted, some order is brought into the chaos by essentially drawing lines where the tracks go, and where they are divided into sectors. The actual details are not quite exactly like this, but that is irrelevant. What is important is that a disk cannot be used unless it has been formatted. The terminology is a bit confusing here: in MS-DOS, the word formatting is used to cover also the process of creating a filesystem. There, the two processes are often combined, especially for floppies. Where the distinction needs to be made, the real world Unix techies call formatting (low-level formatting, while making the filesystem is called high-level formatting) and we combine the two and call it formatting.
Ok, you've learned that your platter (disk) is a mass storage device generally made of metal, covered with a thin layer of iron oxide of which has good magnetic properties.
Computers record data in bits, 8 bits to a byte and 512 bytes to a sector. The Windows OS knows where all your stuff is at upon request. Even the smallest hard drive can store millions of bits and must be organized---called (formatting).
First, a hard drive has to be physically formatted before it can be logically formatted. This (low-level) formatting is done by the drive manufacturer and divides the platter into tracks, sectors and cylinders----these are called physical elements.
Tracks are circular paths around your disk and are identified by a number starting with (0) at the outer edge. The set of tracks that lie at the same distance from the center on all sides of all platters are called a cylinder. Tracks are divided into areas called sectors.
Sectors are usually formatted to contain 4096 bits or 512 bytes. After this physical format--it's ready for logical formatting.
Logical formatting places a file system on your disk and a file system allows an operating system like (Windows-95) to use this space to store and retrieve files. So, this is what you do is a logical formatting using it's operating utility.
This means you can format a drive and use it right away for a storage container like a back-up data area or what ever.
A disk can be divided into partitions and then formatting is applied.
After you partition and format---it's called a (volume). This is why you should give it a name or (label) so you can identify it.
So, you now (hopefully) understand why you have to format. Now, let's look at the commands (without getting into all the other switch's).
FORMAT = places a file system on the disk for storage or a operating system.
FORMAT /s = prepares a partition or disk to make it active or bootable.
FORMAT /mbr = creates a new boot sector and should only be used as a last resort.
FORMAT /U = Does a unconditional format, so do the SYS C: to get system files -- then a through scandisk to fix any errors. This FORMAT /U parameter performs an UNCONDITIONAL format, which DESTROYS every byte of data on a disk by overwriting it with. WARNING: You can NOT UNFORMAT a disk formatted using the /U option!
FORMAT /SELECT /U This particular combination of FORMAT.COM parameters makes a disk UNREADABLE!
WARNING: DO NOT use these two FORMAT switches TOGETHER on ANY drive!FORMAT /Z:n formats a FAT32 drive with a cluster size of n times 512 bytes. Meaning:
drive: = your hard drive letter (C:, D:, etc).
n = number of sectors per cluster multiplied by 512 = cluster size in bytes.Examples:
n = 1 creates a 512 bytes cluster;
n = 2 creates a 1024 bytes (1 KB) cluster;
n = ? creates a ? x 512 = ???? bytes (???? bytes : 1024 = ? KB) cluster.
NOTE: Almost all manufactures of hard drives (these days) come formatted and most will come with a program disk for formatting, partitioning and moving your system from your old hard drive to the new one.
Also, Partition Magic 3 makes it easy to do both at the same time and there's a lot of scenario's about cluster size with partitions with FAT. Click HERE for FAT explained and for Partition Magic 3.
