Hard disks - Formatting & read/write settings

Formatting

Internal hard disks are pre-formatted when you purchase a PC. Removable Hard Disks (or if you are adding extra internal hard disks will usually be blank and unformatted. Formatting structures a diskette so that the operating system can find and store information on it. It also checks for defective areas (for example, where the disk may have been scratched).
Obviously you can use disk formatting to delete data on 'old' disks, and clear all old files and directories.
Formatting;
- Divides the disk into sectors and tracks
- Creates a File allocation table (index of where the files are to be stored)
  - Standard dos (8.3 file format)
  - HPFS - High performance file system (IBM OS/2)
  - Long file names (Win95) - managed by Explorer.
- Can create a boot record

For a Hard disk you can perform a "low-level" format - FDISK to set the disk ready for formatting and create logical disk partitions - where the physical drive is set to two or more drive letters (C and D,E,...). I highly recommend to two logical drives (usually C and D), where C is where seldom changed programs are kept and D contains your working data.
Benefits include;
- De-fragmentation of the hard drive, since generally D is the drive where most read/write operations happen
- Formatting to "clean-up" the drive can be done on either drive (eg. When updating the operating system you can reformat C leaving your data intact.)
Caution
- FDISK will completely erase any data on the hard disk, and will remove the boot record.