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This article mainly introduces the meaning of formatting in the computer, which is very detailed and has a certain reference value. Friends who are interested must read it!

Formatting is an operation that initializes a disk or partition on a disk, which usually causes all files in the existing disk or partition to be erased; formatting is usually divided into low-level formatting and high-level formatting. If not specified, formatting a hard disk usually refers to advanced formatting, while formatting a floppy disk usually includes both.

Format is an operation that initializes a disk or a partition (partition) on a disk, which usually causes all files on the existing disk or partition to be erased. Formatting is usually divided into low-level format and high-level format. If not specified, formatting a hard disk usually refers to advanced formatting, while formatting a floppy disk usually includes both.

Simply put, formatting is initializing the disk so that we can record data to the disk step by step. For example, we have a big house to store books. instead of bringing books and throwing them on the floor, we first put up shelves, mark them in categories, and put them away by category.

Types of formatting

Disk formatting involves two different programs: low-level and high-level formatting. The former treats the disk surface formatting with the characteristic of the number of sectors on the disk; after the low-level formatting is completed, the hardware disk controller (disk controller) can see and use the results of the low-level formatting; the latter deals with "specific information written by the operating system".

Low-level format

Low-level format (Low-Level Formatting) is also known as low-level format or physical format (Physical Format). For some hard disk manufacturers, it is also known as initialization. At first, with the emergence of disks using CHS addressing, frequency modulation (FM), improved frequency modulation (MFM) and other coding schemes, low-level format was used to refer to the operation of dividing the disk into cylinders, tracks, and sectors.

Nowadays, with the gradual withdrawal of floppy disks from everyday applications and the emergence of disks with new addressing methods and interfaces, the word has lost its original meaning. Most hard disk manufacturers define low-level formatting (Low-Level Formatting) as the operation of creating hard disk sectors (sector) to make the hard disk have storage capacity. Now, there are some misunderstandings about low-level formatting. In most cases, referring to low-level formatting often refers to the zero-filling operation of the hard disk.

For a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk, its low-level format creates 160tracks (track) (80 on each side), 18 sectors per track (sector), 512 bits per sector (byte), and a total of 1474560 bits. It should be noted that low-level formatting of floppy disks is usually supported in the system. Usually, the formatting operation of floppy disk includes two parts: low-level formatting operation and high-level formatting operation.

Advanced formatting

Advanced formatting, also known as logical formatting, refers to writing specific data to a specific area of the disk according to the file system selected by the user, such as FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, etc., in order 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 delimiting a piece of disk space in the partition to store file allocation tables, directory tables, and so on, according to the file system selected by the user. so that users can use the partition to manage files.

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