One of the most popular things people did with their PCs back in the 1980s was reformat the hard drive. Yep, they’d just wipe the whole thing out. Zap! Suddenly everything was gone. They weren’t trilled, either.
There’s a reason why Unix computers feature a “root” or “super user” account. That’s because there are some computer operations you just don’t want mere mortal computer users to do. Or, if they do them, they must have the reverence for the system operations they perform. Reformatting the computer’s primary mass storage device would probably be one of those system operations.
Windows still doesn’t offer a superuser account. It has an “Administrator” account, which is more of a hybrid superuser/mortal user account. But nothing of the strength or respect that a Unix “root” account would have. I mean, isn’t your Windows account an Administrator account? Do I even need to ask?
This whole episode reminds me of a chronic problem back in the 1980s. It had to do with the abuse of the FORMAT command in DOS.
Back in the 1980s, computers used floppy diskettes as the primary removable media. On some computers, it was the only media.
To use a floppy, you stuck it in the floppy drive, closed the drive door, then at the DOS prompt, you typed FORMAT. In theory, the disk would then be prepared for use. I still remember the noise the PC made when it formatted a diskette: Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
The problem with FORMAT is that it assumed you were the computer’s superuser and knew what you were doing. When typed without any options, FORMAT simply formatted the “current” disk. If that disk was Drive C, the computer’s hard drive, then FORMAT dutifully began formatting the hard drive. No warning. Nothing.
You can probably see how millions of dollars were made by those clever nerds who developed the UNFORMAT utilities back then.
Microsoft tried to fix the problem by having the FORMAT command display a warning prompt. That’s didn’t work; people just typed FORMAT, Enter, and pressed the Y key when they wanted to format a floppy disk. Ditto for formatting a hard drive. It was habit.
The warning was increased with DOS 5, where you had to type in the hard drive volume label to proceed. That requirement pretty much stopped the accidental formatting, but by then accidentally hard drive formatting wasn’t a problem: Floppy disks had gone the way of the dodo. Common use of the FORMAT command was waning.
My point isn’t to rag a bit on the FORMAT command — which is still around, by the way — but rather to explain why it’s necessary to have a superuser account on your computer. Windows only goes halfway with the Administrator account. They should go all the way and reserve the Administrator account for only those times you do things that change how the computer works. The Mac OS X does it better. Microsoft should learn from it.
