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From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" 
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: What is the difference between a regular Format and a Low Level
Format?
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 00:17:51 +0000
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In message , 
james{at}nospam.com writes:
>What is the difference between a regular Format and a Low Level Format?
>
>I have a program to do Low Level Formats.
>I had a flash drive that somehow got screwed up. A regular format did
>not fix it, but a low level format got it working again.
>
For disc (partition)s: it used to be that a "quick" format just deletes 
the entries in the root directory, thus making the disc (partition) look 
as if it has nothing on it (including sub-folders), whereas a full one 
actually did some sort of test on every sector, so that dud ones could 
be marked as bad and avoided (by in effect making notes of the dud ones 
on the disc somewhere). For modern discs where the disc firmware itself 
has something that does that, it at least exercises the disc.

I'm not sure if "quick/full" is the same as "regular/low-level".

For a floppy, a full format also in effect wrote something on the disc 
that was of use during subsequent operations, rather like drawing lines 
on a sheet of paper before you use it; a "low level" format of a hard 
disc used to do something similar, but again, in modern HDs that's 
probably done before it leaves the manufacturer and isn't really doable 
by the user.

For your flash drive, I'm _guessing_ that the quick format - if that's 
what you did - just did in effect a "del /s *.*", which wouldn't have 
fixed it if the part that stored the root directory was corrupted, 
whereas the low-level format would have re-initialised it.

But someone - Paul probably - will be along in a moment to say more than 
just my guesses (-:.
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar{at}T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Reality television. It's eroding the ability of good scripted television to
survive. - Patrick Duffy in Radio Times 2-8 February 2013
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