Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Disk formatting" in English language version.
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When you do not specify either the RECOMP or LABEL option, the disk area is initialized by writing a device-dependent number of records (containing binary zeros) on each track. Any previous data on the disk is erased.
The format command behavior has changed in Windows Vista. By default in Windows Vista, the format command writes zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. In Windows XP and in earlier versions of the Windows operating system, the format command does not write zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed.
The direct access volumes, on which TSS/360 virtual organization data sets are stored, have fixed-length, page size data blocks. No key field is required. The record overflow feature is utilized to allow data blocks to span tracks, as required. The entire volume, with the current exception of part of the first cylinder, which is used for identification, is formatted into page size blocks.
