Epson 386SX - Manual (Page 242)

You see the head and cylinder numbers decrease as the program
progresses. When formatting is complete, the program flags any
bad tracks and you see a series of messages like these:
Format finished.
Flagging bad tracks...
Cylinder is
nnnn,
head is
nn
Format completed.
Press ENTER to return to the menu.
Press Enter to return to the Hard Disk Format Menu.
Option 2, Destructive Surface Analysis
You can perform a Destructive surface analysis of your hard disk
to accurately locate any bad tracks, and flag any bad tracks that
are not flagged.
WARNING
If any errors occur during this check, all data on the track
that produces the error is destroyed. For this reason, if you
think that an unflagged bad track is causing trouble, first run
option 3, Non-destructive surface analysis, to check the disk
surface,
The Destructive surface analysis operates by a complex process
of writing, reading, and verifying information on every track of
the hard disk, except for tracks that are already flagged as bad
tracks.
D-10 Physically Formatting a Hard Disk