Talk:Disk formatting

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"Never use quick format when formatting a NTFS Drive. There is a chance the drive could become corrupted. Maybe not a big chance, but it is there. Better safe than sorry."
Is there any information/links that back up this claim?
:I'm removing it now. No reference was provided, and it doesn't belong in this article anyway. The article doesn't say what either quick format or ntfs means. --Ropez 08:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would not trust the MFSTM article, as it stands at the moment. See the links I posted in Talk:MFSTM, especially this one , and also the arguments discussed in the data recovery article. Mtford 19:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quick Format and NTFS 

message: I am a bit confused over this low level format. As per this article, low level format erases all data and this data is irrecoverable. But i had a discussion with the "Geeks" of "Best Buy", who told me that there data recovery software can retrieve up to 600 GB of data (including over written one) from a 120 GB HD even if a low level format is performed. So, which statement should i believe in?
:Oy vey.  I'd suggest that you take a lot of things Best Buy's "geeks" tell you with a grain of salt.  Nothing like this can be done with software alone if data is truly overwritten, ever.  Period.  It was once possible, with older low-density hard drives, to strip them to their bare metal, mount their platters in special microscope equipment housed in clean room laboratories, and partially retrieve overwritten data.  With modern hard drives, recovery of overwritten data is simply not possible -- unless the CIA or DIA knows something, in which case they aren't talking, and thus only the CIA/DIA can do it.  Read this.  Also, don't forget to sign your additions (with four tildes) in the future.  :)  71.160.20.130 (talk) 10:16, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Best Buy Geek Squad 

message: How can it be that a ("non quick") format does _not_ wipe all data? How exactly is the testing for bad sectors done? If it is done by writing data to each sector and then testing if what's been written is the same what has been read, how can it be that any data is not overwritten and retains on the disk? Anyone who can solve this mystery??? 195.135.137.107 (talk) 15:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  why doesn't format wipe all data? 

message: Hello, I dont have Englisn as mother tongue.
The last sentence:
From the perspective of preventing the recovery of sensitive data through recovery tools, the data must either be completely overwritten (every sector) with random data before the format, or the format program itself must perform this overwriting; as the DOS FORMAT command did with floppy diskettes, filling every data sector with the byte value F6 in hex.
Does it mean that the DOS FORMAT  can prevent data from being recovered?
If I want to keep my data from format-recovery, what should I do?
Format it from NTFS into FAT32 then once again back to NTFS?Does it work?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.71.122.88 (talk) 04:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  I can't understand one paragraph 

message: The term "Reformat" would logically mean "to format again", as formed by the suffix "Re-" with the word "format".  However, the term "Reformat" is not officially accepted by Merriam Webster's Dictionary, nor by Ask.com's Dictionary.  This is possibly due to the term not being any different from the term "Format"; both definitions are the same.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.41.247.244 (talk) 21:56, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Reformat" 

message: I've modified the history section to
*Qualify the reference to the host seeing sectors
*Indicate that sectors are fixed length
*Include links for both CKD and ECKD
*Correct history to reflect that the 3350 was the last drive to directly support CKD and that the disk subsystems after the 3390 continued to simulate CKD.
*Added a reference to support of sector orientation in z/Linux and z/VM. Was this last TMI? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Qualified over-general statement, added link, corrected history 

message: The block CRC depends on the contents of the block, so, while each block might be written out with a CRC when a disk is formatted at the low level, the CRC written at that time won't be the block's CRC forever - when the block is rewritten a new CRC will be written.  Perhaps some other information should be chosen as an example of what's written on a low-level format. Guy Harris (talk) 23:02, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Block CRC written during the formatting process? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Disk formatting. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110519054645/http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=advanced-format-migration-to-4k-tpc&vgnextoid=746f43fce2489210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD to http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=advanced-format-migration-to-4k-tpc&vgnextoid=746f43fce2489210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://freepctech.com/pc/001/007.shtml
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101129180307/http://seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/tp595_building_faster_more_flexible_infrastructure.pdf to http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/tp595_building_faster_more_flexible_infrastructure.pdf
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 8" Floppies did not come "CP/M Formatted", but rather were purchased as "IBM 3740 Formatted". Digital Research simply took advantage of the fact that IBM chose to fill sectors on track 2 (the CP/M directory) with EBCDIC "V" characters, and thus established the convention of 0xE5 meaning an empty CP/M directory entry. IBM 3740 Formatting had EBCDIC SPACE characters (0x40) in sectors on track 0, if I recall correctly, which I believe was where IBM had their directory. But most new CP/M formats (8" DD, 5.25", etc) tended to just fill all sectors with 0xE5 and avoid the need to know where the CP/M directory would be located. So, the 0xE5 originated from IBM mainframes but was perpetuated in the (pre-IBM) PC world by Digital Research (and perhaps others).
Durgadas311 (talk) 15:03, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to make whatever corrections are appropriate, preferably with a citation. Guy Harris (talk) 16:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrections on 0xE5 and 8" Floppies 

message: Perhaps this article needs to be divided into Disk formatting and History of disk formatting assuming we can come to a consensus of what media and hardware is obsolete and add the appropriate headnote.  patsw (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keeping this article current