How do I perform a low level format?

[Blur]

Hey Guys,

My uncle bought his PC over yesterday for me to take a look at. The hard drive in this thing seems to have a-lot of bad sectors. Anyone know how to perform a low-level format? Or better yet, does anyone know of an app that will automate the procedure a bit? I borrowed SpinRite from a friend but its saying that it'll take 400+ hours to repair the drive :Q.

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks

 

[spamsk8r]

technically you can't low level format a hard drive, that can only be done at the factory and if you did it would completely destroy the hard drive irrepairably. I know in linux you can format a hard drive and it will make it so it ignores all the damaged sectors, but I dont know about windows

 

[Woohah]

If the drive is still under warranty, then call the manufacturer and have it replaced.

Else, check out their website to see if they have utils for your drive.

I know IBM has some utilities that will scan your disk for bad sectors, and let you low-level format the drive or the boot sector. (Look for WIPE.exe and ZAP.exe)
On the other hand, I've seen some makers claim that you can't low-level format their drives.

--woohah

 

[Blur]

Nah, can't have it replaced Woohah its an old Western Digital 3GB drive. Any idea if those utils work with drives that IBM doesn't make?

thanks

 

[4824guy]

yes, that WD software called Lifeguard tools can do that for you. You can download it for free at the WD web site incase you lost the disk.

 

[Blur]

Thanks for the reply 4824guy.

I think that?s the program I downloaded on the WD website and unfortunately it did not work for me. I'll double check tomorrow though I may have downloaded the wrong util and yours might be the correct one.

But I was really hoping for an app that will do ANY hard drive. Any ideas?

 

[Blur]

Anyone?

 

[Woohah]

Blur, I don't know if the IBM utils work universally, but if you've got nothing to lose then I'd suggest at least looking at wipe.exe. I've never personally used them so I don't know if they're even worthwhile for IBM drives. I only know they exist because I was faced with possibly needing to low-level format and ran across them.

--Woohah

 

[PH0ENIX]

Nowadays, a 'Low Level' format is just a bit-level 0 fill.

The old HDD physical format in the system BIOS of certain Award and AMI driven systems was a true low level, or a per-sector physical erase.

Today's HDDs have sector density that is far too great for anything to accurately do a physical erasure, w/o destroying the drive.

I would suggest getting the WD flavour of the Ontrack DiskGO (or disk manager) - that has a bit-level 0 fill as part of it;
Then run something more forgiving like CHKDSK /f rather than Scandisk to detect and mark the truely bad sectors.

Scandisk performs rather few read/write tests on a sector before it gets marked as bad.
This means that quite often, weak sectors are marked bad even though they may still be quite usable.

In any case, we're talking about an old WD ( :disgust: ) drive, with physical faults of an obviously abundant nature...

I'd recommend building a bridge, getting over it, and purchasing a new drive

 

[Blur]

Thanks for all the help guys.

I decided to take PH0ENIX's advice and buy a new drive.

Thanks again.