You may want to reformat a hard disk if you have a serious problem with the drive. However, before formatting a disk with data on it, try every other recovery procedure described in your MS-DOS Reference Manual. Then back up all the data on the disk before you begin.

Note

If you do not enter a bad track list before you. format the disk, the format program analyzes the surface of the hard disk to determine the bad tracks.

Media Analysis

This test identifies the bad tracks on the hard disk by analyzing the surface of the disk to find them. The program uses three different bit patterns; formatting the disk, marking the bad tracks, and displaying the bad track list.

Caution

The Media analysis test destroys any data on your hard disk.

Performing System Diagnostics

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