Format or (just) Initialise?

3 posts, 3 voices

Jun 2, 2014 1:07pm David R. Lane (77) 766 posts	One of the questions that HForm asks is “Format or just initialise?”. Does it matter which one chooses? The context I am interested in is setting up an SD card for RISC OS by first using HForm and then SystemDisc. I have done this several times before successfully and just done it again on a Raspberry-Pi choosing ‘Format’ and it works.

Jun 2, 2014 8:42pm Chris Evans (457) 1614 posts	When IDE drives arrived Acorn, advised to only use Initialise. Nothing has changed that I’m aware of to not follow that recommendation.

Jun 2, 2014 9:07pm Steffen Huber (91) 1953 posts	On most modern (when lba addressing arrived) harddrives, it does the same – “Format” sends at first the format command to the drive, which most drives just ignore and say “OK”, and HForm continues with initialisation.