Used to format a 3½' disk with the number of sectors per track specified using this option. Specifies the number of sectors per track on the disk. Do not format a floppy disk at a size higher than it was designed for. You can specify the target disk to be a size value from 160Kb to 2.88Mb, e.g. The /V option cannot be used with the /8 option.įormats the disk to a size other than for what the drive was designed. If /8 is not specified, FORMAT defaults to 9 or 15 sectors per track, depending upon the disk drive type. WARNING: Files written to a 360 KB disk using a 1.2 MB floppy drive have been proven to not be reliable.įormats at 8 sectors per track. Here each of these arguments is explained: Argumentįormat for single-sided use, regardless of the drive type.įormats a double-density diskette in a high-density type disk drive. In DOS, the first floppy drive is A:, the second is B:, and the first hard disk drive is C: (if present).įORMAT a: Formatting puts crucial information (see FAT Explained) onto the disk so that the host operating system can read and understand it. In order to prepare the floppy disk to be readable on a PC, it must be formatted. This is because there are different encoding methods that were used by the various computers available at the time - Apple used a different encoding method to Commodore (GCR), and both were different to what the IBM PC and its compatibles used (MFM).

Most floppy disks come out of the box 'unformatted'. All flavours of DOS (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc) have all had the external command FORMAT since version 1.0.

Why do i need to format my floppy disk