Re: How do you LOW FORMAT a hard drive
As far as I can remember the old fixed disk controller used to be installed
at paragraph C800:0000. To do a low level format we used to use the debug
facility in DOS and do g C800:0005. I may be wrong, but this was 1986 on IBM
PS/2s using 20MB hard disks, but a lot of legacy stuff seems to have pulled
through....
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard E. Hawkins <hawk@hawkins.cba.uni.edu>
To: Guilherme Soares Zahn <gzahn@cnen.gov.br>
Cc: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Sent: 13 September 1999 14:18
Subject: Re: How do you LOW FORMAT a hard drive
>
> Guilherme grunted,
>
> > > But you shouldn't ever low level format a hard drive. It isn't
necessary
> > > any more since the 80's.
>
> > More that that, it's REALLY dangerous to do so in new IDE drives
(something to do
> > with geometry parameters, if I'm not mistaken)...
>
> I have an old one I'd like to try it on, but the bios doesn't do it. I
> stuck it in another machine briefly, and now it absolutely refuses to
> work as a primary (but is just fine as a slave). It's an old caviar
> 540 for the kids' machine. Right now they have my machine, because
> that machine can't boot from the slave (or even use it without a
> primary present), nor can it recognize more than 1024 cylinders (or use
> the alternate modes). So it sees my 8g drive as a 540 or so :( I
> noticed the box on a new 20G at sam's club yesterday claimed it had
> software to get around old bios's, but I'm not willing to pay $250 just
> to get an old 486 running (the kids' stuff is almost all windows, so I
> have to deal with bios problems :(
>
> rick
>
>
> > Now, how would I LOW FORMAT a floppy disk???
>
> That should happen on a regular formatk, shouldn't it? (the current
command is "superformat")
> --
>
>
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