sombunall
Experienced Member
Because what FORMAT sees is the result of writing and reading back a sector. There's always the possibilty that a bad sector will be data pattern-sensitive and slip under the radar and be considered as "good" when it's not. By entering a defect list, the sectors are marked bad without a chance of accidentally being used.
Shouldn't we be starting a WIKI for information like the stuff in this thread? I think this stuff is important to know.