The previous file system is destroyed or invalidated with a format command (speaking generally and not knowing which specific command was used). How Can I Verify A Wiped Hard Drive in Windows? For Vista and later, format without /q does overwrite with zeroes (one pass unless /p is specified). For XP and earlier, format command without /q did not overwrite with zeroes. That is fairly imprecise, since we don’t know what “when a full format is performed” means for actual command line commands.Įssentially, it means a “non /q” format on the command line. In Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows, the format command does not write zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed.
By default in Windows Vista and later versions, the format command writes zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. The behavior of the format command changed in Windows Vista and later Windows versions. However, MS changed the behavior of the format command for Windows Vista and later. The GUI format dialog has a Quick Format checkbox, which seems to correspond to the /q parameter and is normally checked by default. Well what does that mean? Microsoft doesn’t link to any related documentation, unfortunately. If you do not specify any of the following command-line options, format uses the volume type to determine the default format for the disk. But what about the specific command line “format”?įrom the MS documentation here, the /q parameter appears at first glance to only prevent a CHKDSK run that would check for bad sectors.īut what does a “format” in the command line by itself with no parameters do? Well, this has changed in the past.įrom the MS documentation on the format command: In Windows, a “Quick Format” (which can be thought of as a “regular” format, since it’s fairly common) does not wipe/zero/overwrite the data.
I find that Microsoft hasn’t been totally clear in a few places. I can see the reason for the discussion as this is a little tricky. It started out as a question about disk formatting utilities, but by the end of the discussion, users were trying to determine what the “format” command for Windows’ command line actually did - with no parameters as far as overwriting sectors or not. I recently was asked to contribute to a discussion on the IT social community of Spiceworks.
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