A+: FORMAT and removable magnetic media

Although floppy disks, USB flash memory drives, and removable-media drives are preformatted at the factory, Format is still useful as a means to

    • Erase the contents of a disk quickly, especially if it contains many files or folders.
    • Place new sector markings across the disk.
    • Create a bootable disk that can be used to run MS-DOS programs.

Formatting Floppy and Hard Disks with Windows Explorer


You can use Windows Explorer to format both hard drives and floppy disks. Right-click the drive you want to format, select Format, and the Format options for Windows are displayed (Windows 2000’s options are almost identical, except for the lack of the MS-DOS startup disk option).

Windows 2000 doesn’t offer the Make an MS-DOS Startup Disk option, but is otherwise similar.

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