Note
Sometimes, after a hard disk has been used for a long time,
its data becomes fragmented, causing the disk to perform
less efficiently or produce errors. If this happens, check your
operating system manual for procedures you can perform to
reorganize your data on the hard disk. If those procedures
(or a commercial defragmenting utility) do not solve the
problem, you may want to reformat the disk by following
the instructions in this chapter.
Starting the Program
Follow these steps to start the hard disk formatting program:
1. Insert the Reference diskette in drive A and log onto drive A.
2. Type HDFMTALL and press
You see the Hard Disk Format Menu:
1 - Format
2
- Destructive
surface analysis
3 - Non-destructive surface analysis
0 - E x i t
The option you choose depends on whether you are
formatting a new disk or reformatting a used disk. The
options work as follows:
Format first scans the disk for defective (bad) tracks (if
it has no defective track table) and lets you decide
which tracks to mark as bad. Then it formats the disk
and marks the bad tracks so they are never used to
store data.
6-2
Formatting a Hard Disk