Thread: The UNFORMAT Command

The purpose of the command is to use it to undo the effects of formatting a disk.

The syntax for the UN FORMA T Command is

UNFORMAT d: [/J] [/L] [/test] [/partn] [I p] £/U]

The UNFORMA T command is used to recover files on a disk that have been erased by using the FORMAT command.

The UN FORMA T command cannot always recover all the files that were on a disk that was accidentally formatted. To assure a better recovery of files on a formatted disk, use the MIRROR command.



The options for this command are:

drive - Specifies the drive containing the disk to unformat.

/j - Checks the disk to determine if the MIRROR command has been used to place file-recovery information on it. (In DOS Version 6, this program is stored on the DOS supplemental disk.)

/L - Used with the /partn parameter to tell DOS that there is no MIRROR file on the disk.

/P - Used to tell DOS to send any UNFORMA T messages to the printer.


/U - Used to tell DOS to recover files from a formatte.d disk without using the MIRROR file information (starting with DOS Version 6, this option is no longer available).

/partn - Used to restore a corrupted partition table of a hard disk drive. This option requires a PARTNSAV.FIL file created by using the MIRROR command with the jPARTN option (starting with OOS Version 6, this option is no longer available).