Full format? Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss Full format? in the Windows Vista forums; Is it possible to do a full format with With the Vista setup?...

[ewan_mclean]

Is it possible to do a full format with With the Vista setup?

[Snuffy]

YES, in every since FULL

[felix8406]

When selecting "Custom" installation and after selectting the partition where you want to install Vista, go to the "Drive Options (Advanced)" tab to format the drive.

[ewan_mclean]

Sorry, I never made myself clear, in Windows XP set up there were 2 options,

'Format with NTFS File System'

and

'Format with NTFS File System (Quick)'

It appears that Windows Vista only does a 'quick' format, what I am trying to say is. Is it possible to do a format where the the file system is scanned for bad sectors AND formatted.

[crabby]

You are correct and I know of no way to change it. Any reason for wanting a full format? If so I can point you in the direction of some applications etc...

crabby

[Snuffy]

The easy way to ask Vista a Question such as Format:
open cmd run as admin and type: format /?

FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X] [/Passes]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size] [/Passes]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors] [/Passes]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/Passes]
FORMAT volume [/Q]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
/FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, NTFS,
or UDF).
/V:label Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format. Note that this switch overrides /P.
/C NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed
by default.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened
handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
/R:revision UDF only: Forces the format to a specific UDF version
(1.02, 1.50, 2.00, 2.01, 2.50). The default
revision is 2.01.
/D UDF 2.50 only: Metadata will be duplicated.
/A:size Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings
are strongly recommended for general use.
NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).

Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
following restrictions on the number of clusters on a volume:

FAT: Number of clusters <= 65526
FAT32: 65526 < Number of clusters < 4177918

Format will immediately stop processing if it decides that
the above requirements cannot be met using the specified
cluster size.

NTFS compression is not supported for allocation unit sizes
above 4096.

/F:size Specifies the size of the floppy disk to format (1.44)
/T:tracks Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
/N:sectors Specifies the number of sectors per track.
/P asses Zero every sector on the volume passes times. This switch is
not valid with /Q

C:\Windows\system32>