A few years ago while working on another boot-related project, I had need of a scripted method of formatting a drive, silently and without user intervention (don’t ask).<\/p>\n
After mucking around with the various IOCTL in the disk and volume management WIN32 APIs, I realized there was a much easier method. Windows has always shipped with a command-line format utility<\/a> (aptly named “format”) that could technically be The only problem with format.com is its (understandable) reluctance to actually wipe a disk without the user explicitly OKing it. At the same time, there are quite a few developers out there doing low-level work that does not involve viruses or other malicious intent that are in need of a scripted format run. And, of course, the expectation is that the developer will obtain the user’s permission beforehand.<\/p>\n However when all is said and done, there’s no clean way of formatting a disk behind the scenes. Enter AutoFormat for Windows.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n AutoFormat is a Windows utility to programmatically format a disk without user intervention.\u00a0This is basically the Windows format utility somewhat lobotomized to “forget” to ask a user for permission before formatting a disk. It goes without saying:\u00a0be careful when running using AutoFormat.com, and use at your own mortal peril!<\/strong><\/p>\n AutoFormat.com takes exactly the same command-line parameters as the bog-standard format.com, and is for all intents and purposes one and the same – except it will not wait for the user’s say-so before formatting the target volume. It supports FAT, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS.<\/p>\n Again, one last time:\u00a0don’t use this for malicious intent (and don’t tell us if you do; we’ll be forced to take this down). This software shall be used for Good and not Evil. You shall only use this on a genuinely licensed copy of Windows.<\/strong><\/p>\n And without further ado:<\/p>\n AutoFormat for Windows<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few years ago while working on another boot-related project, I had need of a scripted method of formatting a drive, silently and without user intervention (don’t ask). After mucking around with the various IOCTL in the disk and volume … Continue reading coerced<\/del> err convinced to do the job.<\/p>\n