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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: UNFORMATTING formated PC floppies
Message-ID: <633@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-May-87 18:16:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.633
Posted: Sat May 16 18:16:04 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 17-May-87 08:50:10 EDT
References: <4327@nsc.nsc.com>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 17

In article <4327@nsc.nsc.com> misha@nsc.nsc.com (Michael Umansky) writes:
>Does anyone know if it is possible to recover data from an accidentally
>formatted diskette[?]
[...]
>I heard the the PC-DOS format doesn't actually zero out data on disk but
>rather overwrites the FAT entries.

The PC-DOS format program really does do a low-level format of
floppy disks, hence you cannot recover data from an accidentally-
formatted floppy disk.

The format program does leave most data unchanged on a hard disk.

When accidentally reformatting a disk with valuable data, therefore, it
is preferable to use a fixed disk.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi