FORMAT Command
The third and final step in preparing
a drive is to format it ready to accept an operating
system or data.
After allocating your drives using
FDISK, you should have inserted your startup floppy
disk containing FDISK and FORMAT and rebooted the system.
You should now be at the DOS Command
Prompt ready to begin formatting your new drive(s).
The MSDOS FORMAT command is issued
from the Command Prompt using various switches to specify
how you want the drive to be formatted.
Formatting the bootable partition
To format the Primary bootable partition
- At the Command Prompt, type the FORMAT command followed
by the drive letter to be formatted with a colon and
the switch '/S' as follows....
FORMAT C: /S
The '/S' switch specifies that you
want to copy the system files to the C: drive and make
it bootable.
*Note Don't forget that you have to set your Primary
bootable partition via 'option 2 - Set Active Partition'
in FDISK before your drive becomes bootable!
Formatting Extended or non-bootable
partitions
To format other partitions you simply
type the FORMAT command followed by the drive letter
you want to format as follows....
FORMAT D:
When you issue the FORMAT command you
will be asked to confirm if you want to proceed with
the message.....
'WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE
DISK DRIVE WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format? (Y/N)?'
Since formatting a drive destroys the
data it contains this is a precaution to make sure you
want to go ahead and format the drive.
When the format operation completes
a report is displayed which shows...
- Total disk space
- Corrupted disk space marked as defective
- Total disk space used by the operating
system
- Total disk space available for use
by files
When formatting a drive the FORMAT
program marks any bad sectors it finds as defective.
This will force the operating system to ignore them
rather than risk corrupting data by continuing to use
them.
Once you have formatted all your drives
using the FORMAT command you can proceed to the installation
of your operating system or start to use the new drive(s)
to store data.
You should have realised by now that
the process to prepare and format drives is a very involved
and sometimes complicated process. You can save yourself
a lot of trouble and an awful lot of time by purchasing
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Magic'. This software can create, delete, re-size
and even move partitions without losing existing data!
It is also extremely easy to use with a Windows graphical
interface allowing you to carry out multiple operations
at the click of a button.
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Preparing a Hard Drive