It writes specific data into specific area of the disk according to the file system users have selected, in order to achieve the effect of disk/disk partition initialization and file deletion.

High-level formatting: high-level formatting is also known as logical formatting.What’s more, if users’ hard drive is a standard one, they can also turn to third-party tools when low-level formatting is needed. In this case, users had better make use of the hard drive management/low-level formatting program provided by their hard drive manufacturers, instead. Of course, there’re many motherboards which have no such feature. If users have this option on their motherboard, they can directly choose Hard Disk Low Level Format Utility for low-level formatting. The CMOS of many motherboards provides the low-level formatting function and it is usually embedded in HDD Low Level Format option. And users have no choice but to carry out low-level formatting to hard drive provided that no physical damage like scratches can be found on the surface of platter.īesides, if certain hard drive parameters related to low-level formatting have been attacked and destroyed by virus unfortunately, users have to re-establish these parameters by resorting to low-level formatting. When the magnetic recording on hard drive platter is partially lost due to the impact of strong external magnet, the effect of strong magnetic field or the long-term use, a large number of “ bad sectors” will appear. As a result, lots of manufacturers recommend that this low-level formatting should be users’ last resort. It should be noted that the low-level formatting is a loss operation, which has a negative impact on the service life of hard drive. In fact, the low-level formatting work has been performed to each hard drive by manufacturers when it leaves the factory, so users are no longer required to do such thing. As a preliminary job for high-level formatting, low-level formatting can only be done in DOS environment and its object is a whole disk. Strictly speaking, low-level formatting includes those steps – dive a disk into several cylinders and tracks divide each track into several sectors divide each sector into several parts, such as identification section, GAP area and DATA area. But currently, this kind of formatting generally refers to the zero-fill operation of hard drive. And low-level formatting was used to refer to the operation of dividing cylinders, tracks and sectors. At early times, encoding schemes like CHS addressing, frequency modulation ( FM) and modified frequency modulation ( MFM) are used in disk. Low-level formatting: low-level formatting is also known as physical formatting and it is considered as initialization to some hard drive manufacturers.Read the following paragraphs to know clearly about low-level formatting and high-level formatting. If there is no special instruction, the hard drive formatting usually refers to high-level formatting process while the floppy disk formatting often includes both formatting types.

In general, formatting is divided into two types: low-level formatting and high-level formatting. Therefore, we feel it’s very necessary to talk about the hard drive formatting types before we get done to recovering formatted hard drive. But unfortunately, file recovery from damaged drive is not always practical.įor instance, if the formatted hard drive is logically damaged or has been sent to manufactures for low-level formatting, files in it will be gone forever. It’s reasonable that seeking ways to recover files from formatted hard drive becomes users’ top priority. Reading here, some users may want to ask what if a drive has been formatted unintentionally. They only need to be aware of the fact that all files in the target disk drive will be cleared after formatting was actually performed to hard drive. However, users can also choose to format the disk drive anytime they want after data had been saved to that drive. The implication is that if a disk has not been formatted yet, it can’t be used to save data. Formatting refers to an initialization operation performed to disk to make it available for data storage.

Types of disk formatting