how to do Low Level Format of Hard disk?

Is it an IDE hard disk?  If so, you need to get a low-level utility from the manuf web site.  For example, if it is a Maxtor you can go to www.maxtor.com and get their utility and perform a low-level on the drive.  It may or may not fix the bad sectors.

You might want to take a look at a commercial product, Spinrite, at

http://www.spinrite.com

I was told by my friends that LOW LEVEL FORMAT erase current FAT and re-create a new one. Thus it will slow down the subsequent usage of the hard disk. is this true? If true, how slow can it become?

I have 2 IDE hard disk, that crash very often, and show me some bad sector. I am buying new harddisk, but would like to give it a try with low level format. I thought the software is in DOS, but you guys said it is from the manufacturer. Thanks.

When do a person need a LOW LEVEL FORMAT? What will LOW LEVEL FORMAT helps?

It was in the controller prior to IDE.  You would run a debug command.  Then came IDE and you had to run a special program to low-level the drive.  That is about the only negative, though.  You got more speed, reliability, storage space, ...

Any solution yet?

the maxtor program (maxllf.exe) will often remove bad sectors. I include it on all my boot disks.
to use it you need to put it on a bootable floppy with fdisk,format & scandisk. after maxllf run fdisk & create primary partition then after reboot format the drive.
if it formats all the way run scandisk from the boot disk & see if any bad sectors appear in the surface scan.

hi there,
      thou i am not a genius, to my knowledge low-level format is done thru one of the options in the "bios"  set-up.i shall try to get more info on this!

thanx all!
guysmartgal

There is a low-level format option in many bioses but I have found they are not as thorough as some of the 3rd party programs listed above.

but where can I find "maxllf.exe". Do Seagate, HP, or IBM have  the same thing?

As I cannot find anything like this in my BIOS, I doubt it is there.

Thank you.

I shall try to look at my BIOS.

regards
cwh

You download it from the manuf web site.  We are all trying to help in every question we are involved.  That doesn't mean we are right about everything we post (myself included).

http://www.maxtor.com/products/DiamondMax/techsupport/TechnicalProcedures/20005.html

http://www.cenitec.com/download/drv&bios/Hdd-CD/MAXTOR/MAXLLF/

1st link how to use maxllf.exe

2nd link download site. 63kb download

make a bootable floppy disk (go to www.bootdisk.com to get a good one) & copy maxllf.exe to it.

slink9 mentioned the maxtor utility in his first post. this is the one

just as a by the way, I have yet to find a hard drive that maxllf won't do a low level format on (unless it's a doorstop) regardless of brand.

>  would like to perform a low level format on one of my BAD SECTOR DETECTED hard disk.

I recommend against that. If you can get it to working again, it will remain marginal, meaning that it can be expected to soon go bad again, possibly containing something of more critical value.

> Can I find it under my BIOS or OS?

No. But modern daughter boards, such as SCSI, have the option there for you in its own bios

> I was told by my friends that LOW LEVEL FORMAT erase current FAT and re-create a new one.

hrmph. No way. FAT is not low level. Sometimes it pays not to heed everything friends have to say. But they may still best best mates at the pub

> Thus it will slow down the subsequent usage of the hard disk. is this true? If true, how slow can it become?

Actually, speeds up usage. In base theory, it does nothing to speed. But in your prior terms of restoring 'bad', in that sense it'll slow down because you'd in effect increase the breakdown rate (by labeling good something already determined to be not very good). But for general access, it can be like a 'refresh' to the bits on the HD, according to any recent changes to HD's former precision. So it should read_sector corectly the first time, without error, more frequently.

highstar1 -- very nice thorough descriptions, I ditto

maxllf -- while I disagree with premise of all-encompassing, I have not used that one yet,,, current pessimism, but I'l give that a mental footnote myself for things to check on more later. So, Thanx, I think.

Why not just run the disk manager utility, identify and lock out the bad sector(s)?

MS format should also put you in good shape, so long as you did not go and misconfigure either bios setting for track info, or run some application that mismanaged the boot sector. That is all irrelevant to low level, which you should never need hear of again.

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thank you highstar1

Asker has returned and awarded.  Thanks all.
Moondancer - EE Moderator