Not only the format of floppy disks is different between MSX and SVI-318/328, but also the way to make the formatting:

• On SVI-318/328, FORMAT is not an instruction or a command, but a BASIC program that provides only logical formatting.
• On MSX physical and logical formatting are always done together (see CALL FORMAT) and the file system is also completely different.

Before using FORMAT on SVI-318/328, you must first physically format the disk under CP/M with the SVFRMT utility. Some later Disk BASIC versions provided also BLOAD-able version of this program for BASIC. If you want to create a bootable disk, you also need to copy the Disk BASIC using the provided SYSGEN.BAS program.

These mentioned tools may differ a bit depending of Disk BASIC version used. There exists known SVI Disk BASIC versions at least for:

• 168kB - Single Sided, 40-track disks
• 338kB - Double Sided, 40-track disks
• 338kB - Single Sided, 80-track disks

Typically SVI-318/328 used 5.25" disks, but users have upgraded to 3.5" drives as well. BIOS boot routines are designed to be also 8" drive compatible, but by default BASIC requires a drive that is MFM encoding capable.

The system of sectors and clusters is very different from MSX:

• Sector size on SVI is 128 bytes (track 0) or 256 bytes (rest of the disk) while MSX always uses 512 bytes sectors
• Track 0 has 18 sectors and other tracks have generally 17 sectors
• On SVI, the cluster is defined as one half of a track (roughly 2048–2176 bytes, depending on the exact sector layout), and their maximum number varies according the used formatting tool and the drive type:
  • SVI Disk BASIC: Around 150–170 clusters
  • CP/M: Exactly 163 clusters