What does formatting mean?

Formatting refers to an operation to initialize a disk or a partition in a disk. This operation usually results in the erasure of all files in the existing disk or partition; formatting is usually divided into low-level formats formatting and advanced formatting. Unless otherwise specified, formatting a hard drive usually refers to advanced formatting, while formatting a floppy disk usually includes both.

The operating environment of this article: Acer S40-51, Windows10 Home Chinese Edition

Recommended: "Programming Video"

Format ) refers to an operation to initialize a disk or a partition in a disk. This operation usually causes all files in the existing disk or partition to be cleared. Formatting is usually divided into low-level formatting and high-level formatting. Unless otherwise specified, formatting a hard drive usually refers to advanced formatting, while formatting a floppy disk usually includes both.

Simply put, formatting is to initialize the disk so that we can record data on the disk step by step. For example, if we have a big house to store books, we will not move the books in and throw them on the floor. Instead, we will first set up bookshelves inside, mark them with categories, and put the books in categories.

Types of formatting

Disk formatting involves two different procedures : Low-level and high-level formatting. The former handles the characteristics of disk surface formatting and assigns disk sector numbers; after low-level formatting is completed, the hardware disk controller (disk controller) can see and use the results of low-level formatting; the latter handles "accompanied by Specific information written by the operating system".

Low-level formatting

Low-Level Formatting (Low-Level Formatting) is also called low-level formatting or physical formatting (Physical Format). For some hard disk manufacturers, It is also called initialization. Initially, with the emergence of disks using coding schemes such as CHS addressing method, frequency modulation (FM), and modified frequency modulation (MFM), low-level formatting was used to refer to the division of disks into cylinders, tracks, and sectors. operate.

Nowadays, with the gradual withdrawal of floppy disks from daily use and the emergence of disks using new addressing methods and interfaces, this word has lost its original meaning. Most hard disk manufacturers will use low-level format ( Low-Level Formatting) is defined as the operation of creating hard disk sectors to enable the hard disk to have storage capabilities. Nowadays, people have certain misunderstandings about low-level formatting. In most cases, when low-level formatting is mentioned, it often refers to the zero-filling operation of the hard disk.

For a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk, low-level formatting will create 160 tracks (80 per side) on the floppy disk, 18 sectors per track, and each sector 512 bytes; 1,474,560 bytes in total. It should be noted that low-level formatting of floppy disks is usually supported by the system. Normally, the formatting operation of a floppy disk includes two parts: low-level formatting operation and high-level formatting operation.

Advanced formatting

Advanced formatting is also called logical formatting. It refers to the file system selected by the user (such as FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, etc.), it is an operation to write specific data in a specific area of ​​the disk to initialize the disk or disk partition and clear all files in the original disk or disk partition. Advanced formatting includes rewriting the corresponding area of ​​the partition table in the master boot record, and carving out a piece of disk space in the partition for storing file allocation tables, directory tables, etc. for file management based on the file system selected by the user. Users use this partition to manage files.

The above is the detailed content of What does formatting mean?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!