In addition to destroying all the data on the hard disk, physical formatting removes any partitions and logical formatting defined on the disk by your operating system. After you physically format a new or used hard disk, follow the instructions in your operating system manual to partition and format the hard disk to prepare it for use.

Note

Sometimes, after a hard disk has been used for a long time, its data becomes fragmented, causing the disk to perform less efficiently or produce errors. If this happens, check your operating system manual for procedures you can perform to reorganize your data. If those procedures-or a commercial defragmenting utility-do not solve the problem, you may want to reformat the disk as described in this chapter.

Choosing the Type of Format

Follow these steps to display the formatting options:

1.Insert the Reference diskette in drive A.

2.Turn on or reset the computer. It automatically loads MS-DOS and displays the Operation Menu.

3.Select 2 to highlight Format hard disk and press IEnter The Hard Disk Format Menu appears on the screen:

HARD DISK FORMAT MENU 1-Format

2 - Destructive surface analysis

3 - Non-destructive surface analysis

0 - Exit

A-2 Physically Formatting a Hard Disk