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Does the diskpart format command do a quick format, or a full format.

A full format writes zeros to all the bits and is significantly slower that a quick format.

Additionally, what type of format does the Windows format command use (no diskpart, just using the vanilla format command)

A commenter suggests that this question is similar to this question Does long-format in Windows zero-write the hard drive? There might be a little bit of similarity, but I'm asking about the syntax for both the Windows and diskpart format commands. The other question involves whether zeroes are written during a full format, which I have already stated that I know happens during a full format and not during a quick format.

David Anderson
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Pingu21
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2 Answers2

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DiskPart's format command performs a full format, unless you specify the quick parameter.

From Microsoft's examples:

To perform a quick format of a partition or volume with the NTFS file system, assign the "Main Volume" label to it, and specify that files added to the new volume be compressed by default, type:

format fs=ntfs label="Main Volume" quick compress

Velvet
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When you refer to format (non-diskpart) do you mean format.com ?

From the docs, format performs a full format unless you specify /q:

Quick format with filesystem NTFS and volume label DATA:

format a: /q /fs:NTFS /v:DATA

Other available filesystems are FAT, FAT32, exFAT, ReFS, and UDF. Availability depends on the type of volume being formatted.

David Anderson
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user2531336
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