Speed will be HIGHLY dependant on what size disk it is. A 360k disk formats with /u fairly fast, and although it is STILL quicker to do /q, it isn't a huge difference... however, when doing a 1.4 disk, it cam be the difference between over a minute and under 10 seconds. /q is basically the same as doing "del *.*", it doesn't reformat the disk at all, it just rewrites the FAT so the disk thinks it is blank, the fastest way to clear a disk is "format a: /q /u"... UNLESS there are only a few items on it, then del *.* might edge it out Also, with all this /u business... be careful when doing that on 5.25" disks in a high density drive. If you put a DD disk in, and do format /u, it will NOT warn you that it is going to attempt to format a DD disk as HD. In MS DOS, when you format on a HD 5.25 drive, it automatically tries to format HD... you need to specify the format size (or use /4) to format 360k... leaving off the /u will warn you that the format is different then what you are about to try. Unfortuantly, leaving off the /u ALSO fails to remap bad sectors, AND saves the unformat info adding a few more seconds onto the disk format. None of this warning business applies to 3.5" drives, they will detect the HD vs DD disk, and format correctly... so with those it is safe to always use /u if you want to. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>