Low-level formatting

Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option. Is
there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?

My apologies for asking a question that is probably on a FAQ. I'm going to
go looking for one next, but would genuinely be interested in adding your
viewpoints to what I find -- especially on the "easy" part of the question.

Thanks for consideration past, present and future.

"Grinder" wrote in message
news:sJgsc.15893$af3.839753@attbi_s51...
Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive
from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option. Is
there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?

My apologies for asking a question that is probably on a FAQ. I'm going
to
go looking for one next, but would genuinely be interested in adding your
viewpoints to what I find -- especially on the "easy" part of the
question.



AFAIR all drive manufacturers provide utilities to do this, I use maxtor
drives and their utility is called powermax. Search your drive
manufacturers site first.

I recently LL formatted a 200GB drive - took a full 24 hours!!

--
Ian

Grinder wrote:
Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option. Is
there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?

My apologies for asking a question that is probably on a FAQ. I'm going to
go looking for one next, but would genuinely be interested in adding your
viewpoints to what I find -- especially on the "easy" part of the question.

Thanks for consideration past, present and future.



Here is a good site that might explain why modern machines do not have
a 'low-level format' function in the BIOS.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/...ilities-c.html

Here is a quote from the above linked page.
"When most users today talk about "low-level formatting" a drive, what
they are really talking about is doing a zero-fill. That procedure will
restore a functional drive (that is, one that does not have mechanical
problems) to the condition it was in when received from the factory. "

HTH
Ed

On Mon, 24 May 2004 06:36:09 GMT, "Grinder"
wrote:

Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option. Is
there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?

My apologies for asking a question that is probably on a FAQ. I'm going to
go looking for one next, but would genuinely be interested in adding your
viewpoints to what I find -- especially on the "easy" part of the question.

Thanks for consideration past, present and future.


I agree with Eddie, but if you still want to track a utility down,
just google "low level forma." I did that recently (couldn't remember
all of the debug command for the old WD controllers) and found all
sorts of links for newer drive utilites. Dunno why you'd want to?

"Casey Tompkins" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 May 2004 06:36:09 GMT, "Grinder"
wrote:

Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive
from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option. Is
there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?

My apologies for asking a question that is probably on a FAQ. I'm going
to
go looking for one next, but would genuinely be interested in adding your
viewpoints to what I find -- especially on the "easy" part of the
question.

Thanks for consideration past, present and future.


I agree with Eddie, but if you still want to track a utility down,
just google "low level forma." I did that recently (couldn't remember
all of the debug command for the old WD controllers) and found all
sorts of links for newer drive utilites. Dunno why you'd want to?

Eddie is right -- I want to do a zero fill. Thanks, everyone, for your
responses.

X-No-Archive: yes

On Mon, 24 May 2004 06:36:09 GMT, "Grinder"
wrote:

Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option.

If you used those BIOS routines in modern IDE drives you will trash
them. That is why later date computers stopped that option altogether.

The name formatting is, IMHO, a misnomer since the disk is already
formatted into the final requirements by the manufacturer before it
leaves the factory.

A format program, for that matter never writes to the data area of the
disk, it just checks whether the sector reads. If it cannot it will
mark it as bad, not on the sector itself but in the fat allocation
table that such and such sector is not to be used.

Is there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?

Low level formatting is today just writing zeroes to all sectors on
the hard disk - the utility will tell you which sectors are bad but
the information is not written to the disk.

Your disk manufacturer will have a utility for this.

Note that this operations means all data is lost forever as only
extraordinary methods can recover the data, if anything.


--
Sandy Archer
Reply to newsgroup only

For links to Harddisk management freeware
http:/members.tripod.com/~diligent/harddisk.htm

"Grinder" wrote in message
news:sJgsc.15893$af3.839753@attbi_s51...
Not so long ago, I could accomplish a low-level format of a hard drive
from
my BIOS settings. I notice some machines no longer have this option. Is
there a free, easy and hardware-independent way to do this?


If you call 10 years or so ago not long ago.. The IDE drives have never
been able to be LL formatted by the bios. It might seem to work, but it
does nothing or it could mess up the IDE drive. Only the MFM or RLL drives
could be LL formatted by the bios .

Home users can not LL format the hard drives anyway. There are usually
utilites that will let you do some maintenance on a drive made by the drive
makers. Go to their web site and see what they have.

the last time i low level formatted a drive was on a 386SX-20
computer. so we are looking at going on 11-12 years.

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