Standard and quick HD formats.
 

The standard format takes a long time, not too surprising since disks are so big these days, but the quick is very quick. Can anyone tell us what is going on?


I wondered if the long format was doing what we used to call a Low Level format...actually writing to the disk, re-mapping if you will, a contiguous surface. If not, just what could take so long?

I think the quick version just marks everything for deletion, i.e. overwritable.

But I could be wrong.

Low level formatting no longer exists for modern HDs because modern drives do not use stepper motors to locate tracks, and hence there is no way to determine where tracks should be recreated on the media. Instead in modern drives locate tracks based on special servo control data permanently written to the drive platters at the factory by the hard drive manufacturer, using highly specialized equipment. They can only be re-initialized and the surface checked for errors.

A "quick format" is the process of setting up an empty file system on the disk, and installing a boot sector and is fast but if, as well, the entire disk may be scanned for defects, it takes considerably longer, up to several hours on larger hard disks.


Hope this helps.

Indeed it does. Thanks.

Gone are the days when One could walk into a customer's premises, suck One's teeth, and say in hushed tones. "Oh dear, you need a low level format. That'll cost you a squillion quid."

The first IDE drives were so unreliable, that with some makes, I used to linear formant them. Lost a lot of data space, but hey, we had 60...or even 80 Mb to play with.