The INTERNATIONAL option formats disks using the international versions of the file systems. International file systems handle upper and lower letter case conversions of international characters in file names. The NOINTERNATIONAL option forces the non-international file system on devices for which International mode is the default. The default setting for floppy disks and PCMCIA cards is NOINTERNATIONAL and for hard drive partitions is INTERNATIONAL. Disks created with INTERNATIONAL mode set are not compatible with Amiga system software releases prior to 2.04.
Re: full-fat formatting - I think it used to be frowned upon with some (SCSI?) drives as it could mess up the drive geometry - I doubt it's an issue on modern IDE/SATA drives - not much point unless you enjoy watching progress bars though
