Better Floppy Formats Intended For Windows 98 Windows 95 Although you can right-click on a floppy drive in Explorer or My Computer and select Format to format a floppy, there's a better way. Type Format a: /u at the MS-DOS prompt (substitute A: for whatever drive letter you wish). Using DOS instead of Windows to format floppies will yield better multitasking, meaning you'll be able to do other things while formatting floppies (strange how it multitasks DOS better than Windows). Furthermore, using the /u paramter specifies an unconditional format, meaning that it won't save unformat information, yielding a faster format and more free diskette space. To simply erase a floppy, type Format a: /u/q - this is much quicker than a full format, but will not ensure an error-free disk. Remember, if Format reports any bad sectors, throw away that floppy immediately. Written by: Annoyances.org Last updated: Thursday, August 9, 2001 Care to discuss this article with other Windows users? Select your operating system here, and click Continue to post your question. - Choose your OS -Windows 7Windows VistaWindows Server 2003Windows XPWindows 2000Windows MeWindows 98Windows 95 Previous discussions about this article: (open a message to see applicable responses, if any) [Windows 98] Question about 'Better Floppy Formats' (Eddy: Sunday, September 23, 2001) [Windows 98] Comment about 'Better Floppy Formats' (Eddy E: Monday, April 22, 2002) [Windows 98] Question about 'Better Floppy Formats' (Josh W: Saturday, August 17, 2002) [Windows Me] Question about 'Better Floppy Formats' (Dick Morant: Sunday, December 8, 2002) Return to "Improving Performance"