Rosanne,

        From the website www.pcguide.com I found the following.  Hope it helps....

        Brian

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        There are two steps involved in formatting magnetic media such as floppy
disks and hard disks. The first step involves the creation of the actual
structures on the surface of the media that are used to hold the data. This
means recording the tracks and marking the start of each sector on each
track. This is called low-level formatting, and sometimes is called "true
formatting" since it is actually recording the format that will be used to
store information on the disk.

        The second formatting step is high-level formatting. This is the process of
creating the disk's logical structures such as the file allocation table and
root directory. The high-level format uses the structures created by the
low-level format to prepare the disk to hold files using the chosen file
system.

        For a hard disk, there is an intermediate task that is performed between
the two formatting steps: partitioning. For this reason, combined with the
incredible complexity of modern hard disks, they are low-level formatted by
the manufacturer, and high-level formatting is done by the DOS FORMAT
command (or equivalent). Floppy disks require no intermediate step, and due
to their relative simplicity, they are both low-level and high-level
formatted at the same time by default when you use the FORMAT command.

        Once the floppy disk has been low-level formatted, the locations of the
tracks on the disk are fixed in place. Since floppies use a stepper motor to
drive the head actuator, the floppy drive must be aligned properly in order
to read the tracks on the disk. Sometimes the heads of a particular drive
can become out of alignment relative to where they should be; when this
happens you may notice that a disk formatted on the misaligned drive will
work in that drive but not in others, and vice-versa.

        Since floppy disks tend to be put together cheaply these days and many of
them are getting rather old, it is generally preferable to always low-level
format a disk in the drive you plan to use to write to it. If you have a
disk that was formatted in another drive that is not working in yours, you
can sometimes make it work again by reformatting it. (I personally never
bother due to the cost of floppy disks; if I see errors it is gone.)

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