Low Level Format

paddyc

How hard is it to do a LLF on a hard drive ?

thanks paddy

po0k

easy.

Go to your manufacturer's website and search for utilities.

Maxtor have MAX Power Tools or something.

Very very easy way to do it.
The Maxtor stuff will re-certify your drive too.

paddyc

can u explain a wee bit more about Maxtor,

Let me explain, I am on the A+ certification course at the moment and our teacher said its very hard to find the utilities to do a LLF, and that generally you have to buy a new H drive ? IS this the case ??

thanks

po0k

This is the problem with alot of the teachers in these courses. They don't play with tech.

You don't have to buy a new hard drive. That's the "Easy Curry's Customer" way of thinking. ie Dumbass.


As I said above:
What make of drive are you trying to LLF?
If it's a Maxtor (drives which I'm familiar with) you can get a utility from their website
PowerMax Diagnostic Software
MaxBlast3 utility

Capt'n Midnight

Any decent SCSI / ESDI / RLL / MFM controller will do a low level format from thier BIOS - no OS needed.
for older controllers (1980's vintage)
run debug and goto the routine in the BIOS chip (use MSD to locate it eg: D800) g=D800:6 - the value 6 can vary - try U d800:0 to look for NOP's ....

IDE controllers are a little trickier - they translate CHS - eg: there will be twice as many real sectors on the outside cylinder (like CD's) - it's a way of squeezing in an extra ~30% of sectors - and also automatically remap bad sectors on the fly (with SCSI drives you can see the defect list - IDE not easily viewable) - in theory when you see bad sectors on an IDE it means that the hidden ones are all used up...

But a format /u WILL erase data - unless you are the FBI and can peel back layers of magnitism one by one (something like - read data - heat to near curie temp - re read - repeat...)

Filling unused space with 1111 / 0000 / 1010 / 0101 several times should make it next to impossible for easy retrival...

There is the debug script to nuke the partition table - an another old trick is to set the HDD to type 17 partition and format etc. then back to it's original setting..

And some utils eg spinwrite and various utils from manus also do low level stuff too...

Or drop in to Hammond Lane - they have big electromagnets there

Cake Fiend

The Maxtor utility can test and LLF some other drives as well, very handy. I saved an IBM drive with it there the other week.

Virus_Inc

SCSI is fine for LLF but I wouldn't try it with IDE, anything happens during a LLF of a IDE drive the drive becomes unuseable & unrecoverable. Or so I've been told....

po0k

I've had to restart LLFs in the past on dodgey old maxtor drives, they were fine, all LLF does is re-write the surface of the disc in 0s.

deepspeed

Ive got a Low Level Format utility for DOS, its only bout 50k in size, pm me and i'll email it to u

Eurorunner

click here, then scroll down for links to all the hard disk manufacturers low level format utilities

po0k

Cool page that

Virus_Inc

Think what you're refering to is a zero-fill... low level format as I understand it is when you rewrite all the CHS (cylinder/head/sector) information to the disk - this is done at the factory when the drive is first assembled and in modern IDE drives prolly doesn't need to be done again. LLF is a legacy from back in the day when hdds were the size of turntables and held about 20Mb.

paddyc

I will be another week or two till i get back to the HD, so i will be posting here again then, thanks for you help

Seems easier to be to hit it with a big magnet ??? would I be right ?

thanks again, paddy

Capt'n Midnight

just wondering how how would you propose to demagnitise the tiny little RW heads ?

not sure if true or not but I've heard of platters being warped by serious magnets (US. Navy)

Though there are the stories about putting stuff in a microwave - NOT recommended since metal reflects and the magnetron might overheat etc... (also any ~ 30 mm long tracks on the PCB would probably vaporise..)

BigEejit

All the big banks and military etc ..degauss their old drives when finished with them, but the drive is unusable after doing this ... I've even heard of military drives being degaussed and then rolled over by tanks, just to be sure to be sure

As for LLF ide drives, never even heard of it being done and to be honest there will probably be something seriously wrong with it for you to go doing that ...

A low level format on a SCSI drive will add the grown errors (new bad sectors since last LLF) to the P-List on the drive (the p-list contains information about every bad sector on the drive) .. I havent seen a utility that shows this list, but there are bound to be some, the information is kept by the controller on the drive itself.