FORMATTING HARD DRIVE VOLUME

Formatting Volumes:

Formatting prepares the volume to accept data. Unformatted volumes contain no file system and are
not accessible by using Windows Explorer or any other application.

Formatting can be done in the following ways:

* By using Disk Management and formatting the new volume as it is being created.

* By using Disk Management - right-click an existing volume - and selecting Format.

* By using Windows Explorer - right-click the drive letter - and selecting Format.

* By using  command prompt - using the Format.exe command - and selecting the
               appropriate parameters

Note that if an existing volume that contains data is formatted, all data will be lost. Windows XP protects itself by preventing the user from formatting the system and boot partition for the operating
system by using any of the built-in Windows utilities.

Formatting options

Volume Label  - The name that is displayed in Disk Management and Windows Explorer which is the  
            character name for a volume up to 11 characters.

File System  - Allows the user to choose from the FAT (for FAT16), FAT32, or NTFS file systems

Allocation Unit Size -  Allows  the user to change the default cluster size for any of the file systems.   
            Microsoft recommends leaving this value at its default setting.

Perform A Quick Format - Specifies to format the drive without having Windows perform an  
            exhaustive scan of the drive to check for bad sectors. Select this option only if certain that the
            disk is not damaged.

Enable File And Folder Compression  -  This allows  compression of all files placed on the disk by
            default. Compression is always available on an NTFS volume and can be enable or disable at
            any time through the properties of the files and folders on the volume. File And Folder
            Compression is available only when the volume is specify to be format using NTFS file
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