🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 07:25:50PM +0000, dadiOH wrote:
> Kenneth wrote:
> > On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:48:10 -0500, Tony
> > <Tony@TheDeli.Sandwich> wrote:
> >
> >> Next time do a low level format when you format the hard drive.
> >> Get a hard drive with a guarantee longer than one year maybe
> >> seagate.
> >
> > Howdy,
> >
> > The switch of brands may be a fine idea, but it is my
> > understanding that modern disks cannot be "low level
> > formatted" by the end user.
> >
> > Am I wrong about that?
> 
> Yes.  But for all practical purposes, no.

True it's not the sort of thing most computer users would do since you need
third-party software to engage the format subroutine in the drive's
firmware.  Google hard-disk recovery tools and you'll easily find something
with that feature.
 
> "Low level formatting" involves writing track/sector data to the drive
> along with other data and a byte pattern.  It was normally done (via
> DOS) with 5 1/4" floppies, maybe with the little floppies too, but
> took a long time even when disk capacity was 80 KB.  Given the size of
> hard drives it would take bloody forever now even allowing for the
> vastly greater CPU and drive speed.
 
> However, it *could* be done if one knew what one was doing, had a
> program to do so (or could write one directly accessing the disk drive
> controller) and had eons to wait.

There are a bunch of utilites out there that will let you send the format
command to the drive.  I did it a few times several years ago and got mixed
results.  Some drives seem to implement it as a no-op while others take
gobs of time doing something to the platters.  I assume it is as you said
that a pattern is written to the drive including a gap on each track of
known length and other data which is going to be particular to the software
running on the drive's controller board.

I suppose there are good reasons as to why it generally takes so long to do
the low-level format, but it's not clear that it would take proportionately
longer on hard-disks of contemporary size since they are also so much
faster than earlier models.  To wit, in my laptop I have a tiny little
Fujitsu 120G drive that sustains 40MB per second.  That's just crazy in
comparison to what I could get out of a fast Seagate drive ten years ago.
Progress is your friend.

If low-level formatting doesn't seem to do anything, you'll just have to
live with the fact that hard-drives (yours included) are closed systems
without user-serviceable parts inside. :(


Dr. Beard