A process of formatting a disk so that there is nothing on it. This should only be done on a SCSI hard drive; low level formatting an IDE drive will DESTROY it.
[n] - (computer science) the format of sectors on the surface of a hard disk drive so that the operating system can access them and setting a starting position
initialization noun (computer science) the format of sectors on the surface of a hard disk drive so that the operating system can access them and setting a starting position