FORMAT.COM

The below is the output of a "FORMAT /?" command. FORMAT drive [/ONCE][/4][/T:tracks][/N:sectors][/F:xxxx][/FS:xxxxx][/L][/V[:label]][/BS:blocksize][/LS:logsize][/S]

Parameters

 * drive - Specifies the drive to be formatted.
 * /ONCE - Specifies that only 1 disk, diskette, or disc is to be formatted and no prompt is to be displayed.
 * /4 - Formats a 360KB diskette in a 1.2MB drive.
 * /T:tracks - Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
 * /N:sectors - Specifies the number of sectors per track.
 * /F:xxxx - Specifies the size to which the diskette is to be formatted. For example: 360, 720, 1.2, 1.44, 2.88.
 * /FS:xxxxx - Specifies the file system to use to format the disk. For example: FS:FAT or FS:HPFS or FS:JFS.
 * /L - Specifies long format procedure for optical read-write disks.
 * /V:label - Specifies the volume label.
 * /BS:blocksize - Specifies, in bytes, the block size desired for the file system. For JFS 512 bytes, 1024, 2048, or 4096 bytes are valid.
 * /LS:logsize - Specifies, in megabytes, the size journal log to create for the file system.
 * /S - Specifies that files on the device will be sparse files. JFS has two file allocation schemes, these being "sparse" and "dense." Sparse allocation is the amount of space allocated to a random-access file when a block written may not be within the earliest portion of a file. Dense allocation allocates all the space prior to the block being written when the block is written. For instance, if a random-access file has 5120 bytes (ten 512 byte blocks), and the fifth block is written to, the resulting usage with sparse allocation is 512 bytes. With dense, the resulting usage will be 2550 bytes, even though the first 2048 bytes are not yet being used. The sparse method is server efficient; only the space used is allocated to the file but this would presumably lead to fragmentation, since when another block is written, the sparse allocation will cause the data to not be in sequentially ordered sectors.