RE: How do you LOW FORMAT a hard drive
Actually, low formatting most SCSI drives is useful since it tests the drive
and updates the dud sector map with the results. SCSI and IDE drives that
would be damaged in some way by low formatting *usually* return success with
out doing anything when asked to do a low level format. IOW, hard drives are
very smart now-a-days. Formatting a floppy drive IS a low level format
combined with writing out the FAT for DOS.
-----Original Message-----
From: Guilherme Soares Zahn [mailto:gzahn@cnen.gov.br]
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 9:18 AM
To: William T Wilson
Cc: Patrik Magnusson; debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: How do you LOW FORMAT a hard drive
> > > I need to Low Format a hard drive - I have a drive that has at some
stage
> > Some BIOSes lets you do this.
>
> 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)...
Now, how would I LOW FORMAT a floppy disk???
[]'s
Guilherme Zahn
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