🚀 go-pugleaf

If you are referring to LL formats in general this is not quite correct. About 5-6   
years ago when IDE's were first coming on the scene it was possible to do this for   
certain IDE drives. Almost any IDE drive made in the past 2-3 years can safely be   
low level formatted with a LL utility provided by the manufacturer. Some commercial   
programs such as Spinrite claim to do this, although you have to careful not to   
change the default interleave.  
 
Because of the way drive media and read/write mechanisms have improved over the past   
several years LL formatting of IDE's isn't really necessary in the vast majority of   
cases. People often try to do this as a last resort to save a faltering drive but it   
rarely works as most IDE problems are not amenable to fixing via LL format. 
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obrien@it.uwp.edu (James Obrien) wrote: 
 
> 
>Low level format of an ide drive is the best possible way to invest in a  
>new drive.  Low level formatting an ide drive through you bios will erase  
>the drive's physical geometry by overwriting it with the logical geometry  
>the bios uses to translate it.  You may get the drive to work temporarily  
>(seldom happens) but it will most likely not work at all.   
> 
> 
>-- 
>As usual,		"When one is hunting monsters, one  
>	Jim		 should take care not to become one."