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HDD and low level format

John Connor

John Connor

Lifer
I was having a problem with my computer where I couldn't copy more than 300 MBs of data to the second HDD a 500 GB platter. I was running all kinds of malware scans including Herdprotect. I ran Hard Drive Sentinel and the write feature seemed to pass but when it came to reading it would stall and say not responding. What's odd is I wasn't able to write files past about 300 MBs yet the write feature worked. I couldn't even write a file to my external drive without it failing. What I finally did is use a program to low level format the drive and did a slow format instead of quick format then I copied a massive 32 GB install of Flight Simulator to the drive and it worked! What is the deal? I have been having sporadic computer freezes and when I mount an image to a virtual DVD drive and I try to dismount sometimes Explorer will crash and restart. The image was on the platter. It sounds like this HDD is on it's way out and the reason why I'm having so many problems. But was the low level format a temp fix? I scanned the drive with HD Tune and found no errors. SMART is 100% okay. The drive is a Hitachi and I imagine it's about 6 or 7 years old.
 
John Connor said:
I just want to know why a low level format seemed to solve the issue?
Click to expand...
from what I know a low level format marks bad or dodgy sectors as bad. so probably after that format, the bad sectors which were causing the issue are no longer being used. that's the only explanation I can think of
 
Yes, LL Format remaps the drive. But, at the cited age, it is probably time to replace it.
 
Yeah, I read about the LL format program I used and the keyword in their description was "close to LL format." But it worked. I'm might just switch out the drive though.
 
Why would you call the act of zeroing a drive "low-level-format".
It's essentially a wipe. A "format" would mean that some kind of formatting (that could have been modified previously) would be present after the act, but that's not the case.

But yes, writing to a sector will trigger the relocation of it, if it is pending. Reading will not, since the drive will not give up attempting to get your data back. By overwriting it, it acknowledges, that you no longer care about what was there, and assigns a new sector.
Check your reallocated sector count and pending sector count from time to time.
 
G73S said:
oh I never knew that, can you please explain how and why not?
Click to expand...

Low level formatting is creating the containers where the 0's and 1's reside on the drive. This can only be done at the factory, consumers haven't had this capability for decades.
 
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