Actually, low formatting most SCSI drives is useful since it tests the drive and updates the dud sector map with the results. SCSI and IDE drives that would be damaged in some way by low formatting *usually* return success with out doing anything when asked to do a low level format. IOW, hard drives are very smart now-a-days. Formatting a floppy drive IS a low level format combined with writing out the FAT for DOS.
-----Original Message----- From: Guilherme Soares Zahn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 9:18 AM To: William T Wilson Cc: Patrik Magnusson; debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: How do you LOW FORMAT a hard drive > > > I need to Low Format a hard drive - I have a drive that has at some stage > > Some BIOSes lets you do this. > > But you shouldn't ever low level format a hard drive. It isn't necessary > any more since the 80's. More that that, it's REALLY dangerous to do so in new IDE drives (something to do with geometry parameters, if I'm not mistaken)... Now, how would I LOW FORMAT a floppy disk??? []'s Guilherme Zahn
