Advanced formatting of hard disk

2.Advanced formatting of hard disk
High-level format
After partitioning the hard disk, some “independent” logical drivers are founded. If now we start
system from the floppy drive, enter DOS, then you can see the drive letters of DOS partition,
which is on behalf of logical driver, for instance “C:”, “D:” and so on. The system commonly
arranges letters according to alphabet. Now let’s try to enter “C:” or “D:” after that we can see the
system prompt that “DISK MEDIA ERROR”. Why? These logical disks are empty; to use them,
we need create file system. The whole process is high-level format of logic disk. The high-level
format certainly aims at the logic disk, neither physical disk nor certain directory. For file system
is corresponding to logic disk, we can say that high-level format aims at file system. In this article,
logical disk means logical drive.
Format partition
High-level format of DOS logic disk can be completed by “format” command. Main functions of
high-level format are as following:
Assign logical serial numbers for sectors (serial numbers in partition) from cylinder that assigned
by each logical drive
Establish DBR in basic partition, and load 3 system files of DOS if there is “/S” parameter in the
command.
Establish file allocation table (FAT) in each logical disk.
Establish File Directory Table (FDT) that is corresponding to root directory and data area.
If you carry out high-level format by “Format” command, please pay attention to following 4
items.
1. To already activated basic DOS partition (generally it is disk C), you need the following
command:
Format C:/s
By this command, you may install DOS system files after high-level format, to make this logical
disk to become the boot disk. Certainly, you may also use “SYS” command to send system files
after high-level format, that is complete the boot disk and file transmission by the following two
commands:
Format C：
SYS C：