Re: Need disk error checker for Windows XP

anon wrote on Sun, 26 Mar 2006 18:04:25 -0800:

> Question - I thought that when the disk was formatted that 'something' was 
> written to all the sectors during the formatting procedure

In the real world, yes.

What Microsoft calles "formatting", in particular a "quick format", is 
what everyone else calls "creating a filesystem". It assumes that the 
device already *is* formatted and simply writes the stuff at the 
beginning of the disk that defines the filesystem (bootsector, root 
directory, initialised FATs for a FAT filesystem - not sure how NTFS 
works).

A real "format then create filesystem" cycle is achieved by using the 
"/u" option to the format command line. This should detect badblocks.