The FORMAT command writes marks on the disk to indicate the beginning and end of tracks and sectors. There are two kinds of formatting: ‘low level’ and ‘conventional’. The former is done by the disk manufacturer and does wipe out any previous data on the disk. The latter (conventional formatting) does not wipe the disk clean; any data from before can still be recovered easily forensically. (more…)

This information should be of security interest because it can help render any previously stored information on a hard disk unreadable. There are different ‘flavors’ of FDISK and you should use the proper one for the operating system you have in your computer.

• DOS 6.22 FDISK cannot handle drives larger than 8.4 GB. (more…)