DOS feature on formatting disk

[Jim Leonard]

Dan Williams wrote:
>   In MSDOS the /u doesn't actually mean unconditional in the normal
> sense. It means do not save unformat information, it will still stop
> if it gets errors.

That's incorrect; /u really does mean an "unconditional" format in the sense 
that it will format/write and then verify a track.  If you omit /u, format 
merely tests each track for readability, with no actual formatting happening. 
Try it yourself; even without an int 13 monitor you can time it with a 
stopwatch to see that omitting /u takes significantly longer.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)                    http://www.oldskool.org/
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