Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!PLEASE HELP ME IF YOU CAN
Message-ID: <21996@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 24 Apr 88 19:17:04 GMT
References: <52@lakart.UUCP>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 30

In article <52@lakart.UUCP> dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) writes:
|From article <12951@brl-adm.ARPA>, by dschultz@belvoir-mail1.arpa:
|> HELP!!!!!!
|> SOMETIME TODAY SOME  #$%$#$#$$#*&%##!!!!! PERSON FORMATTED A HARD DISK
|> ON A ZENITH 248 COMPUTER RUNNING MS-DOS 3.1 !!!!
|
|When you format a hard disk EVERYTHING on it goes (I know as I have been
|messing with hard disk drivers for about six months now). Without backup
|it is lost forever.

You are mistaken.  Some bright MS-DOS designer named the MS-DOS
counterpart of the UNIX mkfs program "format," thus confusing the
issue of low-level versus high-level formatting forever in the MS-DOS
world.

If you don't understand the difference in the formatting styles, a
low-level format builds the blocks that are read by the controller on
the physical disk surface.  This is generally nonrecoverable process
-- all data is destroyed.  It isn't REALLY nonrecoverable, but you really
don't want to buy or build the hardware necessary to recover the data.  A
high-level format (such as mkfs) puts the structures necessary for the
file system to operate onto the disk.  In MS-DOS this means it
basically needs to put a blank FAT on the disk and make sure the root
directory doesn't have any files in it.  In UNIX it means you need to
put the superblock and inode tables on the disk and build the free
list of blocks.  Details may vary from system to system, but the idea
remains the same.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu