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From: yawei@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (mr. yawei)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: What is low-level/high-level FORMAT?
Message-ID: <1991Jan21.204417.9165@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 91 20:44:17 GMT
References: <61737@brunix.UUCP> <12052@ccicpg.UUCP> <1991Jan21.022114.23765@vpnet.chi.il.us>
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 16

In article <1991Jan21.022114.23765@vpnet.chi.il.us> cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (gordon hlavenka) writes:
>I am curious as to some of the details of the MS-DOS "High-level" format.  If
>the LL format writes sectors, gaps, etc. and the HL format "builds the file
>system structures", why does the DOS HL format not complete in only a few sec-
>onds?

As far as I know, MS-DOS was just reading through all the sectors to see
that they are okay. Of course hard disk reformatting is not something
you do everyday, so one should be able to stand a little delay there
rather than finding bad sectors later on.

Some OEM's MS-DOS (don't remember who) actually *writes* to every
sector. This also destroys whatever is there. Baring that, a high-level
format is usually recoverable with the right software.

yawei