Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary

Disk formatting is the process of preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for use with the file system of an operating system. Formatting a drive (or partition) effectively destroys all data it contains. For this reason, before formatting any disk, backups of vital data should be taken; a computer with a corrupted operating system can be reverted to a fresh state by formatting the disk again and installing the operating system on the newly formatted disc. A formatting of a disk involves two quite different processes that have come to be known as "low-level formatting" and "high-level formatting." Low-level formatting deals with formatting of disk surfaces required by the disk controller hardware; high-level formatting deals with software-specific information written by a specific operating system.

Related Terms

Disk Format