Apple IIgs - Manual (Page 19)

Page 19 of 84 II gs
Printed: Thursday, July 25, 2002 12:14:50 PM
on disks.
Formatting a Disk
Before you can save documents on a blank disk, the disk has to be formatted. Formatting divides
a disk into sections where information can be stored.
Different applications go to different lengths to help you get disks formatted:
Some applications offer to format a disk automatically when they discover that you've asked
them to save a document on a blank, unformatted disk.
Some applications offer formatting as one of the commands on the application program's menu.
Some applications, discovering an unformatted disk, just beep and put a message on the screen
to the effect that you'd better exchange the blank disk for a formatted one if you expect to
save anything on it. In this case, you should format using the System Disk. (The procedure for
formatting is explained in the system disk documentation.)
Important Find out how your application handles formatting before you create a lengthy or
important document. If your application is the type that doesn't format disks and you don't
have a formatted disk handy, you'll have to quit the application and lose the document in
memory in order to format a disk.
When a disk is formatted, three things happen:
You're asked to give the disk a name (often referred to as the volume name for reasons
explained a little later).
The disk is divided into sections where information can be stored;parking space for your data.
A directory is set up on the disk. At first, the directory is empty except for the name of the
disk and the amount of space avail-able on the disk; but as you save documents on the disk, the
names, sizes, and locations of those documents are recorded in the directory. Applications use
the directory to find the loca-tions of the documents you ask them to load into memory. You can
use the directory to see what's on a given disk.
Important Formatting erases everything stored on a disk. You should format a disk only before
you save something on it for the first time or when you want to erase everything that's on the
disk.
Why disks are sometimes called volumes: Volume is a general term for an area where information
is stored. It's less media-specific than the word disk. If you're storing information on a
5.25-inch disk or a 3.5-inch disk, disk name and volume name are synonymous. With
large-capacity storage devices like hard disks, you can have more than one volume on a disk.
That's why some applications ask for volume name instead of disk name.
Saving a Document
When you want to save a document on a disk, you choose the Save command from the application's
menu. After you choose the Save command, the application usually asks you where you want to
save the document. There are lots of ways the application might ask this question; one way is
to give you a list of choices like this:
Save To:
3.5-inch Drive #1
3.5-inch Drive #2
PATHNAME: