From: charles kaufman <chuck@grinder.acc.uri.edu>
I'm trying to avoid repartitioning. I will if nothing else works. But I don't know what 'low level format' means. I remember doing that for DOS before there was IDE, but thought it wasn't needed anymore. Thanks for all the information. Chuck Kaufman
Low-level format is *not* needed any more -- that is, as long as your hard drive isn't fubared (as in fscked up beyond all recognition). It may not be called a low-level format, either. I have a couple of Maxtor drives and there is a Maxtor utility for them which will do the low-level format. In the utility itself the operation is called a "Write test", but the docs explain what it is. Basically, this will re-write the MBR and all the sectors and "restore the drive to the condition in which it was shipped". I had to use it once when I managed to screw up my MBR and it's backup as well. Thankfully, this happened when I was installing a drive so there was no data on it.
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