How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

[Talahasee]

How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

How often would I do it?

Why would I do it?

What s/w is involved, and where do I get it?

TIA

Tallahassee

 

[Guest]

How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

How often would I do it?

Why would I do it?

What s/w is involved, and where do I get it?

TIA

Tallahassee

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

How often would I do it?

Why would I do it?

What s/w is involved, and where do I get it?

TIA

Tallahassee

Google is your friend.
http://www.google.com/search?source...05-18,GGLD:en&q="low-level+format"+definition

If you don't know what this is, you likely don't want to do it. It's not
something you would run on a regular basis, likely.

 

[Squire]

Low level formatting is no longer necessary.
If you have a virus, or your hard drive has crashed,
Just boot with your XP CD and delete all partitions.
Then reinstall XP.

Jerry

 

[Guest]

Low level format of what, your harddrive, floppy drive, ZIP drive, what?
Do not recommend you try your "C" drive for that is your harddrive and
all files will be deleted. Formatting is done automatically when reinstalling
WindowsXP with a clean install. There are several levels of formatting
disks, such as low-level (quick format), unconditional (/U), or setting
format parameters. Just be forwarned that formatting any disk will delete
ALL data, period!

 

[Squire]

If you have a hard drive with bad sectors on it,
You can acquire Spinrite ver6,
from Gibson Research at the following:

http://www.grc.com

This will do a low level format for you.
This would be a last effort to fix a bad disk
But with the low price of disks these days, not worth the effort.

Jerry

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

How often would I do it?

Why would I do it?

What s/w is involved, and where do I get it?

TIA

Tallahassee

If you get some replies that you do not agree with, will
you verbally abuse the respondent, as you did in your
last post in this forum?

 

[R. McCarty]

Most drives are factory "Low Level" formatted. What is usually
referred to as Low Level format is actually a Zero Write to all the
locations on the disk.

Many of the diagnostic tools provided by the Disk Manufacturer
offer a Low Level format or Zero Write function.

It's main use is to do a form of Security erasure on the drive. All
drive surfaces have magnetic retentivity. Even though existing data
is overwritten, there is a "Ghost" level of magnetic information that
remains. Basically Forensic technicians (FBI, CIA, NSA) have a
clean room lab where data can be recovered after numerous write
operations on disk clusters.

There are two levels of recovery, Software & Hardware. Tools
like a product I use, Cyberscrub can effectively prevent recovery
on erased data. There are specific levels (patterns) that make it
harder to obtain previous data. One called Gutmann is so intense
that it supposedly prevents Hardware/Clean Room recovery.

 

[D. Spencer Hines]

Named after Kasper Gutman in the Maltese Falcon? <g>

Or is it the name of the inventor of the technique?

DSH

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

Just be forwarned that formatting any disk will delete
ALL data, period!

This guy's a ****ing GENIUS!

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Named after Kasper Gutman in the Maltese Falcon? <g>

Sidney Greenstreet, one of my favorite actors!

 

[Jonny]

How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

Current ATA / EIDE hard drive, you can't or shouldn't. Scsi with the scsi
onboard bios selection if available.

How often would I do it?

See above reply. Scsi, when installing the scsi hard drive for the first
time.

Why would I do it?

See above reply. Scsi, to remove any previous low-level formatting
compromising what the bios sees.

What s/w is involved, and where do I get it?

There is no software available for this.

If you mean something other than low-level formatting, indicate so.

TIA

Tallahassee

.............
Jonny

Everybody lives somewhere.

 

[Unk]

Just be forwarned that formatting any disk will delete ALL data, period!

http://www.digitalforrest.com/peruggia/myfiles/bsm.gif

 

[Plato]

How Do I Do a "Low Level Format"?

You cant. You can only zero fill the drive to overwrite all data.

How often would I do it?

Only when you need or want to.

 

[Steve N.]

If you have a hard drive with bad sectors on it,
You can acquire Spinrite ver6,
from Gibson Research at the following:

http://www.grc.com

This will do a low level format for you.
This would be a last effort to fix a bad disk
But with the low price of disks these days, not worth the effort.

Jerry

The true low level format ability in Spinrite cannot be done on modern
drives.

"Can SpinRite low-level format my IDE, EIDE, or SCSI drive?

No software of any sort can truly low-level format today's modern
drives. The ability to low-level format hard drives was lost back in the
early 1990's when disc surfaces began incorporating factory written
"embedded servo data". If you have a very old drive that can truly be
low-level reformatted, SpinRite v5.0 will do that for you (which all
v6.0 owners are welcome to download and run anytime). But this is only
possible on very old non-servo based MFM and RLL drives with capacities
up to a few hundred megabytes."

Even then it isn't necessary to use something like Spinrite to do so on
an MFM or RLL drive sice their controller cards have a low-level format
program built into the BIOS that's entered via dubug from DOS.

Steve N.

 

[Steve N.]

http://www.digitalforrest.com/peruggia/myfiles/bsm.gif

LOL!

Steve N.