low level formatting?

[slackerinabox]

So I'm grabbing a few hard drives from my mac and putting it into my pc and want to make sure that everything's Kosher- I'm thinking a low level format on both drives would be smart. Any suggestions on a program I can use (on my pc that is)? Do I have to get the low level formatted from the manufacturer of the drives or is there a general formatted our there? Thanks!

 

[Ranger X]

How about booting to MS-DOS and using the format from that?

 

[Tbirdkid]

just use the software from the hard drives or get a win 98se boot disk and fdisk it. That should be fine...

 

[muppet]

There's no longer any need to perform what is truly known as a ?Low Level Format? on hard drives.

A true Low Level Format is the process of creating tracks and sectors on the hard drive platter to ready it for data storage. That process is now performed in the manufacturing plant when drives are manufactured, and does not need to be done again. In fact, it?s a quite complex procedure on modern, large capacity drives, and really CANNOT be performed at home.

The term Low Level format is really just a misnomer from days gone by, and the earlier drives which used Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) just as floppy disks do. When you format a floppy disk you use Low Level Format, when you format a hard drive you do not!

There is no need whatsoever to do a Low Level format! It?s an old-fashioned idea which people don?t realise is no longer relevant.

The drive utilities made available by hard drive manufacturers might CALL the procedure a Low Level Format but it?s really a ?Zero Fill? utility. It overwrites the entire drive with zero values, effectively removing every single trace of data from the drive. Zero Fill utilities most often give you the choice between a ?Quick? function (overwrite the Partition Table and the Master Boot Record) and a ?Full? function, which takes several hours and overwrites the entire drive.

There are really only three reasons for using such a utility:

You have contracted a computer virus which has embedded itself into the drive?s boot sector.
You are changing to a completely different Operating System, and wish to completely remove all traces of what is already on the drive
You are disposing of the system and wish to be completely sure that all traces of data are removed so that they cannot be retrieved again.

A Zero Fill utility may be helpful if a drive is having ?Sector errors? returned persistently for it, but success is unlikely. When a drive proves persistently troublesome with errors, it should really be replaced.

I?ve personally never yet found need to use a utility program such as this, and I doubt if many others really have need for one either. Low Level Format is an old-fashioned, outdated idea, which people simply won?t let lay down and die

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212
So I'm grabbing a few hard drives from my mac and putting it into my pc and want to make sure that everything's Kosher- I'm thinking a low level format on both drives would be smart. Any suggestions on a program I can use (on my pc that is)? Do I have to get the low level formatted from the manufacturer of the drives or is there a general formatted our there? Thanks!

I use Maxtor's free utility called Maxblast. It does the LLF (or zero-fill like noted above). The proggie is free but you must have a Maxtor HD in the system somewhere. I just take the Maxtor out of my rig and put on the IDE channel of my other rigs to LLF my other drives with Maxblast.

Fern

 

[slackerinabox]

Originally posted by: muppet
There's no longer any need to perform what is truly known as a ?Low Level Format? on hard drives.

A true Low Level Format is the process of creating tracks and sectors on the hard drive platter to ready it for data storage. That process is now performed in the manufacturing plant when drives are manufactured, and does not need to be done again. In fact, it?s a quite complex procedure on modern, large capacity drives, and really CANNOT be performed at home.

The term Low Level format is really just a misnomer from days gone by, and the earlier drives which used Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) just as floppy disks do. When you format a floppy disk you use Low Level Format, when you format a hard drive you do not!

There is no need whatsoever to do a Low Level format! It?s an old-fashioned idea which people don?t realise is no longer relevant.

The drive utilities made available by hard drive manufacturers might CALL the procedure a Low Level Format but it?s really a ?Zero Fill? utility. It overwrites the entire drive with zero values, effectively removing every single trace of data from the drive. Zero Fill utilities most often give you the choice between a ?Quick? function (overwrite the Partition Table and the Master Boot Record) and a ?Full? function, which takes several hours and overwrites the entire drive.

There are really only three reasons for using such a utility:

You have contracted a computer virus which has embedded itself into the drive?s boot sector.
You are changing to a completely different Operating System, and wish to completely remove all traces of what is already on the drive
You are disposing of the system and wish to be completely sure that all traces of data are removed so that they cannot be retrieved again.

A Zero Fill utility may be helpful if a drive is having ?Sector errors? returned persistently for it, but success is unlikely. When a drive proves persistently troublesome with errors, it should really be replaced.

I?ve personally never yet found need to use a utility program such as this, and I doubt if many others really have need for one either. Low Level Format is an old-fashioned, outdated idea, which people simply won?t let lay down and die

Here's the deal though - a friend of mine just went from an Athlon XP to an Athlon 64.. We fdisked the drive and reformatted it - the computer still would not post and said "bad boot device" under WinXp... He emailed the tech support and they told him to do a low level format using his W.D. utility disk.. Bingo, problem solved.. So that's one case when an fdisk did not solve the problem...

 

[piasabird]

I have used utilities to write zeros to the entire drive. This helps to perform what is basically a write test to every part of the drive. It also gets rid of all the partitions and any hidden data. Western Digital has a utility that does this.

 

[Zepper]

You can get the Drive Fitness Test from Hitachi and it will test and/or zero-fill almost any IDE or SCSI drive. Just google on "drive fitness test" WITH the quotes and you'll find it.
.bh.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: muppet
There's no longer any need to perform what is truly known as a ?Low Level Format? on hard drives.

A true Low Level Format is the process of creating tracks and sectors on the hard drive platter to ready it for data storage. That process is now performed in the manufacturing plant when drives are manufactured, and does not need to be done again. In fact, it?s a quite complex procedure on modern, large capacity drives, and really CANNOT be performed at home.

The term Low Level format is really just a misnomer from days gone by, and the earlier drives which used Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) just as floppy disks do. When you format a floppy disk you use Low Level Format, when you format a hard drive you do not!

There is no need whatsoever to do a Low Level format! It?s an old-fashioned idea which people don?t realise is no longer relevant.

The drive utilities made available by hard drive manufacturers might CALL the procedure a Low Level Format but it?s really a ?Zero Fill? utility. It overwrites the entire drive with zero values, effectively removing every single trace of data from the drive. Zero Fill utilities most often give you the choice between a ?Quick? function (overwrite the Partition Table and the Master Boot Record) and a ?Full? function, which takes several hours and overwrites the entire drive.

There are really only three reasons for using such a utility:

You have contracted a computer virus which has embedded itself into the drive?s boot sector.
You are changing to a completely different Operating System, and wish to completely remove all traces of what is already on the drive
You are disposing of the system and wish to be completely sure that all traces of data are removed so that they cannot be retrieved again.

A Zero Fill utility may be helpful if a drive is having ?Sector errors? returned persistently for it, but success is unlikely. When a drive proves persistently troublesome with errors, it should really be replaced.

I?ve personally never yet found need to use a utility program such as this, and I doubt if many others really have need for one either. Low Level Format is an old-fashioned, outdated idea, which people simply won?t let lay down and die

You actually have to overwrite the drive with random data (and sometimes several times) to be sure that the old data is completely unrecoverable. The DoD and other government agencies often grind old drives to powder, and sometimes then melt the remains, to make perfectly sure that no data can be recovered!

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: muppet
The drive utilities made available by hard drive manufacturers might CALL the procedure a Low Level Format but it?s really a ?Zero Fill? utility. It overwrites the entire drive with zero values, effectively removing every single trace of data from the drive. Zero Fill utilities most often give you the choice between a ?Quick? function (overwrite the Partition Table and the Master Boot Record) and a ?Full? function, which takes several hours and overwrites the entire drive.

and that's why people cling to the idea that they can, or should, perform a LLF on their brand new IDE drives.. sadly :/

 

[redbeard1]

This will do a nice wipe and work on any drive. It can also do multiple drives at once.

dban