I am doing a serial ata setup on a maxtor 160gb hard drive. Motherboard boots up and says to push f4 to enter raid setup. I an not doing raid setup, just one serial ata drive. I want to format it and options under raid setup are create raid, delete raid, etc, and Low Level Format. What the hell is a low level format?
What is a Low Level Format???
- Thread starter Techie333
- Start date
Also, when I try to format within dos, it says format not supported when i type in "format C:"......wats that about?
What if I already did a low level format? Is there a way to undo it, or should I just leave it..?
lokiju
Lifer
- May 29, 2003
- 18,526
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Woa, your serious? um, your gonna have a tough time then, just boot off of the Windows XP cd, hit F6 when it says to and use the floppy disk that was provided with your Motherboard or SATA Controller card, during the Windows Setup process you will have to format the drive using either NTFS or FAT if the drive is not yet formatted.
FeathersMcGraw
Diamond Member
- Oct 17, 2001
- 4,041
- 1
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If you did a low-level format on your drive, you're not going to be able to format it in DOS (or Windows, or Linux, or whatever) until you use a partitioning utility to set up partitions (which is what defines the "C:").
A low level format will restore the drive to its factory configuration aka no partitions and a FAT 16 type drive.
Low-level formatting then installing Windows XP? I thought we stopped doing that after Win95/98? The easy way is to just pop the CD in and let it do its magic.
If you deleted the partition, you may need to fdisk and create a new partition.
If you deleted the partition, you may need to fdisk and create a new partition.
FeathersMcGraw
Diamond Member
- Oct 17, 2001
- 4,041
- 1
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Originally posted by: GoodToGo
Yeah when you get the unopened drive it is full of porn isnt it?
It certainly won't be formatted FAT16.
And unusable. The only way a low-level format will work is if you use the SPECIFIC program made for the drive. If you use ANYTHING else, your drive is trashed. At least that's what i've experienced.
Originally posted by: GoodToGo
Yeah when you get the unopened drive it is full of porn isnt it?
ROFL :beer:
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/eide/79-870033.pdf
Writing Zeros to the Hard Drive
If you tested the hard drive, checked all hardware in the system, and verified that the BIOS is
correctly set up, and are still experiencing problems, you might want to reinstall the software on your
system. Before reinstalling the software, you can use the Write Zeros To Drive option to erase the
entire hard drive, including the MBR (master boot record), all partition tables, and all data.
CAUTION: This procedure overwrites existing data on your hard drive. If you choose this option, be
sure to back up user data before proceeding.
Writing Zeros to the Hard Drive
If you tested the hard drive, checked all hardware in the system, and verified that the BIOS is
correctly set up, and are still experiencing problems, you might want to reinstall the software on your
system. Before reinstalling the software, you can use the Write Zeros To Drive option to erase the
entire hard drive, including the MBR (master boot record), all partition tables, and all data.
CAUTION: This procedure overwrites existing data on your hard drive. If you choose this option, be
sure to back up user data before proceeding.
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