You should already have made sure that there is no information stored on the hard disk that you want to save. Press Y to begin formatting. The formatting process takes several minutes. When it is completed, the system will display:

F o r m a t t i n g

System transferred

Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?

Here, your computer is asking you to name your hard disk drive. This is a result of the /V switch used with the FORMAT command. A disk label can be useful when sorting directories, so you may want to enter one now.

A volume label can use up to eleven characters. See Chapter 4, “Using MS-DOS,” for a list of valid label characters. When you have entered the drive label, your computer will respond:

XXXXXXXXbytes total disk space XXXXX bytes used by system

XXXXXXXX bytes available on disk

The /S switch in the FORMAT command caused the active portions of MS-DOS to be loaded onto the system area of the hard disk. At this point you can boot the system from the hard disk.

6-10 Using Your Hard Disk