formatting

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The formatting (from latin size , shape, form ' ) referred to in the data processing in the field of data storage, all the processes through which a storage medium is prepared to receive data.

There are several levels:

  • Low-level formatting - the physical division of a storage medium into tracks and sectors by the controller .
  • Partitioning - the physical and logical division of the storage medium into coherent structures.
  • High-level formatting - the logical division of the partition structure with a file system by software (mostly by the operating system ).

Insofar as the physical classification of the medium as a norm is determined by the nature, industrial standards or special use, separate low-level formatting is not required. In these cases, both processes can be carried out at the same time, for example with floppy disks , CD-ROM , CD-RW or DVD- ROM / RW.

Low-level formatting

With low-level formatting, the hard disk is physically divided into tracks and sectors. Low-level formatting is almost always done by the manufacturer today. The parameters on which this is based - for example for the different numbers of sectors in Zone Bit Recording - remain unknown to the user, so that he should not undertake any low-level formatting himself. Usually every hard drive already has some defective sectors when it is shipped, which are hidden by the manufacturer. It saves certain sectors in the so-called P list that the hard disk should not use.

Low-level formatting tools and utilities

Most manufacturers offer operating system-related utilities that include formatting in addition to other work on the control of a data carrier. None of these programs offer a real low-level format , but rather offer the option of performing a zero fill under this name in order to remap bad sectors .

Most programs only work with data carriers from the manufacturer. The Linux distribution Desinfec't (formerly Knoppicillin ) of the computer magazine c't offers a wide selection of such programs, collected and bootable ( DVD ).

High-level formatting

The term “high-level formatting” comes from the jargon of the IT industry. In colloquial language , only the generic term "formatting" is used for it in a shortened and generalized way. The formatting sets up a file system (e.g. ext4 , FAT32 or NTFS ) on the data carrier.

The high-level formatting is based on the partitions created as part of the low-level formatting. This second logical formatting is controlled by the operating system. Under Microsoft Windows and DOS , high-level formatting can e.g. B. can be initialized with the FORMATcommand . Under Unixoid systems, such a formatting is started with mkfs.* (make filesystem) where the * has to be replaced by the desired file system, for example ext2or ext3. Within the framework of this scheme, the specifications for the file system and for cluster sizes are adjusted using parameters.

Normal and quick formatting

There are two different methods of high-level formatting the disk : fast and normal formatting. They differ in the following points:

  • Normal formatting - If normal formatting is carried out on a data carrier, a search for bad sectors is carried out irrespective of the file system and the partition is overwritten with zeros, which deletes existing data. This takes the majority of the time. The file system metadata is then written .
  • Quick format - If a data carrier is formatted with the quick method, regardless of the file system, the files are removed from the directory of the data carrier or the relevant partition, but the search for bad sectors is skipped. Only the file system metadata is written, which usually only takes a few seconds.

Depending on the configuration and the operating system used, a physical data carrier can be formatted as a whole as a partition with a file system. Since, in contrast to low-level formatting, there is only a logical division here, a data carrier can also be divided into several partitions beforehand and these can be set up with different file systems.

In the case of fast high-level formatting, the old data are not available in the new file system, since they are no longer referenced by corresponding references in the file system. However, they are not necessarily deleted. Most of the time, they physically remain on the hard drive until they are overwritten with new data. As long as the data blocks used are not rewritten, extensive recovery is still possible with the appropriate software, but it is more difficult than if the files were simply deleted. It is therefore not uncommon for software to be able to restore only the individual files, but not the folder structure.

Some operating systems, such as B. Windows from Vista , perform a mid-level formatting during normal formatting, in which the data is physically overwritten with a 0. According to a scientific study presented in 2008, a single overwriting of the hard drive is sufficient to permanently delete data. Even specialized data recovery companies with the appropriate equipment can usually no longer reconstruct the data.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Formatting  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Hard drive diagnostic tools (can usually also format):

Low-level formatting:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hard Disk Facts (PDF) Retrieved February 26, 2012.
  2. ↑ MSKB941961: Change in the behavior of the format command in Windows Vista . Microsoft Corporation . February 23, 2009. Retrieved October 24, 2012: “The format command behavior has changed in Windows Vista. By default in Windows Vista, the format command writes zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. In Windows XP and in earlier versions of the Windows operating system, the format command does not write zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. "
  3. ↑ "Secure deletion: overwrite once is sufficient" , Heise Online, accessed on October 24, 2012.