DOS Menu FORMATTINGFull View

What Is Formatting?
      Picture a filing cabinet drawer. You put 26 folders in the drawer. Now, so you can quickly find an item, you label them A to Z. And you make an index listing what's in each folder. Formatting is sort of like this. It creates the organization for the drive. Partitioning would be like the filing cabinet with each drawer being a drive.

      When you DELETE a file or FORMAT a drive, you are only changing the INDEX. In your filing drawer you decide to erase all of folder C. You go to the INDEX and mark the older as EMPTY. But you don't remove the items in that folder because that would take too much time. Now you have something new to put in folder C. You check the index and it shows the folder as EMPTY. You take the items in the folder out and discard them and put the new items in, making the entry in the INDEX.

      The computer works like this. So, until that space has new data added to it, you can still get that information that was supposedly erased. FORMATTING is much the same. Effectively all it does is blank the INDEX. For this reason you can UNFORMAT a drive immediately after accidentally formatting it and you can UNDELETE a file immediately after you delete it.

The format command has a few switches:
/B Allocates space on the formatted disk for system files. Generally you will put the system files on first so you can boot from the drive. So this wouldn't be necessary
/C Tests clusters that are currently marked "bad.". If a program, such as Scandisk or Norton's Disk Doctor, has marked bad clusters you should not unmark them unless you have reason to believe they were erroneously marked. If they were bad they won't get well over time.
/S Copies system files to the formatted disk. If you booted from a floppy which has the OPERATING system you want on the drive, adding this switch will make the drive bootable without performing a separate SYS.COM operation. (Note: you can only boot from a PRIMARY PARTITION which is set as ACTIVE).
/Q Performs a quick format. This just blanks the index if a drive already has been formatted. It saves time if you only need to blank the drive.
/V [:label] Specifies the volume label. If you format without this you will be prompted for a Label Name at the completion.

Floppy Disks

If the drive is in drive A Type:
format a:
If you have Windows 95 or later, this is all that is needed (unless you need to add some of the above switches). To erase an already formatted disk quickly type:
format a: /q
For older DOS you may have to tell the system what type of disk is in the drive. You would have to add these Switches:
/F:size Specifies the size of the floppy disk to format (such as 160, 180, 320, 360, 720, 1.2, 1.44, 2.88).
/T:tracks Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
/N:sectors Specifies the number of sectors per track.
/1 Formats a single side of a floppy disk.
/4 Formats a 5.25-inch 360K floppy disk in a high-density drive.
/8 Formats eight sectors per track.

To format your C drive from A drive with C_DRIVE as the label, and making it bootable, type:
FORMAT C: /S /V:C_DRIVE

You can add one or more switches. You must specify a drive. A minimum would be: FORMAT C:
 

Other Tools

GRDuw: Disk Utility for Windows Me/9x Formatting (MS-DMF), Disk repairs.

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Updated March 17, 2001
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