format usb drive in fat32 512mb allocation in windows 10

If you just do a quick format, then the file data is still on the disk, only the file system structure (file names and information where the files are stored on the disk) are deleted. You might have a disk that you want to destroy or give away. But there are cases where you might want to do a full format.ġ. So normally a quick format is what you want because it is much faster. Accessing each sector on the disk takes much more time than the quick format, which only writes the blocks that contain the file system structure. Since Windows Vista, a full format writes zeroes to all data sectors ( see MSKB 941961). When you say full format, then Windows XP also scans all sectors on the disk for bad sectors ( see MSKB 302686). When you format a disk, Windows XP does a high level format and it writes a file system structure to the disk. High-level formatting might include scanning the disk for bad sectors (check if every sector can be read), and it might include writing zeroes to all data sectors on the disk. Empty in this case means that all entries in the File Allocation Table are marked as unused. With good old FAT (File Allocation Table) for example, the system would write a boot sector to the first disk sector and an empty FAT to the following sectors. This means that the operating system is writing a file system structure to the disk. Second, formatting is used for high-level formatting of a hard disk. Normally the user can't low-level format a hard disk anymore.

Nowadays the manufacturers configure the sector size (like 512 bytes or 4096 bytes) and low-level format the disk. This includes taking the disk and dividing it into small units - the blocks, which can be accessed by the operating system.

The term formatting is used for different things.įirst it is used for low-level formatting of a hard disk.

SuperUser contributor Werner Henze has the answer for us:

Format usb drive in fat32 512mb allocation in windows 10