Drive Format

Hard drives are basically just a set of blocks of bits. There are two kinds of ``format'' programs that manipulate these blocks. One, usually done at the factory, is a ``low-level'' format which writes lead-in, data, and lead-out information as well as marks bad blocks so they are not used.

The second kind of ``format'' program is the one used during install. It sets up the file system format (allocates inodes) and file system size/type information. Both types of format erase what was previous on the drive (well, not really but you normally don't care).