Differences in formatting

[daveleau]

I am curious about the time it takes to format a drive.

I just set up a system with a 60GB 7200 rpm hard drive. I set up three partitions (2x 5GB and 1x50GB). I formatted the first 5GB partition in DOS to install the OS and it took about 3-4 mintues to format (rough estimate). When I got into the system, I formatted the other drives and both drives took less than a minute to format inside of Windows (ME). Why does DOS take lots longer to format than Windows?

Thanks for any ideas
Dave

[Richard_Cranium72]

My guess is that formatting in DOS actually writes "lines" on the HD so that data can be stored.

Formatting within windoze only "erases" data from the drive, actually really only marks the areas as valid for future data to be written.

Only programs like Eraser or BC Wipe actually "Erase" as Hard Drive even then it takes something like 42 overwrites of zeros and ones to completely remove any shadows of pre-existing data.

DrVette

Information courtesy of the Pentagon http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif