The Vault has a facility for formatting a disk before it is written on. It can only format standard (non-twisted) disks of either nine or ten sectors per track but can read and write disks which are formatted differently as long as GEMDOS can also. If you have your own favorite disk formatter, you can use it instead of the one built into The Vault. If you do this, you will need to format all the disks you need before you enter The Vault.
If you have checked the `Format' box, The Vault will give you the `format options' dialog box after you insert the disk and click on OK. You can choose either one or two sides (for a double-sided drive), and either nine or ten sectors per track. You will probably want ten sectors per track because it will let you put more data on each disk. (Note however that there are a few restrictions on the use of 10 sector disks. In particular, you can not use the desktop's disk-to-disk copy with them, although ordinary file copy works okay.) When you are finished selecting the format options, click on `Format'. If you decide not to format and want to insert a different disk instead, click on `Cancel'.
The `Random Serial Number' option can normally be ignored, but if you are interested, here is what it does. Each disk has a 24 bit serial number that should be different on every disk you own. (This number has nothing to do with the backup set volume number mentioned earlier.) TOS uses the serial number to tell when a disk is changed; two disks with the same serial number inserted one after the other will look the same to TOS and can cause you to lose all of the files on the second disk. Since there is no way for TOS to tell what serial numbers are already in use, it generates a random serial number when it formats a disk, hoping that it will be different from all others. It usually will be. If the `Random Serial Number' box is checked, as it normally is, The Vault will do the same. However, if you have your own numbering scheme and want to specify which number to use, click on the `Random Serial Number' box to remove the check. A line will appear on which you can type your own serial number. The serial number must be specified in HEX (base 16).