This is intended to be the permanent foundation of the disk, and is often completed at the factory.

Low-level formatting (i.e., closest to the hardware) marks the surfaces of the disks with markers indicating the start of a recording block (typically today called sector markers) and other information like block CRC to be used later, in normal operations, by the disk controller to read or write data.

Illustrated to the right are the prompts and diagnostics printed by MS-DOS's FORMAT.COM utility as a hard drive is being formatted.įormatting a disk for use by an operating system and its applications involves three different steps. In certain operation systems (e.g., Microsoft Windows), the two processes are combined and the term 'format' is understood to mean an operation in which a new disk medium is fully prepared to store files. The formatting process that performs basic medium preparation is often referred to as 'low-level formatting.' The term 'high-level formatting' most often refers to the process of generating a new file system. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new file systems. Disk formatting is the process of preparing a hard disk drive or flexible disk medium for data storage.

Are floppy disks low level formatted