i am looking for a low-level formatter.

hey guys, i was wonderig if any of ya'll knew of any low-level formatters. i need one for my laptop, i think i have a corrupt piece on my hard-drive and my comp. science teacher said i needed to run this to try and fix it. thanks guys.

eric

 

Although I kind of doubt that a low-level format is what you need, all I'll say is that you don't want to run any one other than one provided by the HD manufacturer itself.

 

ok. thanks doug. i did not know that.

eric

 

Since IDE drives came out many years ago, the need for low level format on a drive is almost nonexistant. The low level formatting is done one time during manufacture, and most of the time, it never has to be done again. If there are any bad sectors on your drive, a normal format will find them and mark them as bad, and they won't be used.

 

But if you are still looking for one...

Most of the time manufacturers will provide you with a download for one on their website.

 

Try searching the manufacturer on MG, you never know, they might have the utilty you need

 

thanks guys for your help. yeah i searched the drive maker and there wasn't one. and i thought formatting would do that as well, but when i go to put on o/s on the machine it just freezes at 70% done. i'll search MG tonight for it. again thanks guys. i really appreciate it.

eric

 

There was another thread on this (LLF) just two days ago.
I posted a relevant comment.
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=43233

As someone mentioned, a LLF rellay doesn't exist anymore, for the end user.
Ctlrs just don't do it.

 

Need some help from other MG 'ers out there, but won't scandisk and/or chkdsk fix up bad sectors (which I assume eric is referring to).

Start--->Run. Type in scandisk ( then press enter) and follow the prompts. Bazza

===

 

It doesn't really 'fix' them. It CAN fix sectors with corrupted data, as long as it's not a physical failure. Scan disk simply attempts to read the information on the hard drive and if it can’t read the information, the sector is declared bad and there goes your information. No new information will then attempt to be written to the sector, as it's marked 'bad'.

This is fine if it's only a couple of bad sectors, but a lot of bad sectors is indicative of a cascading HD failure. The boot/system sectors will eventually go bad, then you're really screwed. All the scanning in the world won't help you if it's a physical failure.

 

yeah i would do that bazaa but i discovered this maybe bad sector as i was trying to install windows on the machine. on every os it freezes up on 70 percent formatted, so i am led to believe that is a bad sector. if i am wrong, please correct, or if you know of another solution all posts are greatly appreciated.

eric

 

How long have you waited for the format to get past 70%? Last time I had a drive with bad sectors, formats would seem to hang for a long time while it tried to format them. I mean like 10 minutes, sometimes. Like was previously posted here, it cascaded and many sectors went bad quickly. I had to trash the drive.

 

Do a web search for the Ultimate Boot CD. It will be an iso file which you can download and burn to a cd with any program that supports burning image files. This contains drive utilities from most of the major manufacturers. The advice given by others earlier is good and sound, but I have ran across a few computers that wouldn't install Windows until the drive was 0'd to factory condition. This is what most of the manufacturers utilities do. Hope this helps!

 

>Do a web search for the Ultimate Boot CD. It will be an iso file which you can download and burn to a cd with any program that supports burning image files.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
That is a un*x product, and building the windows version:
1) requires WinXP/SP1
2) has a very tedious build procedure that most people couldn't follow.

 

Wavetar, you're right. I should have said "mark" sectors as bad, not "fix".As you say, sometimes it can correct bad sectors and maybe transfer data to another sector if you're lucky. If not, there goes your info. I would still be tempted to run scandisk to it's conclusion, overnight if necessary, to see what is the condition of the hard drive. Depends on what it finds, the next step is to try the other suggestions posted earlier, or shell out for a new drive. Bazza

===

 

morlock,
My error, as I should have tried my own adivice before posting. My memory isn't what it used to be, as I have two versions of the Ultimate Boot CD. The orignal that I downloaded from Major Geeks is the one that I was referring to, although I can no longer find it listed. It contained hard drive utilities from all the major disk manufacturers. The utility from Maxtor seemed to work on all hard drives, wiriting 0's to all the sectors, and restoring it to factory shipping condition.

I also have the version that the web search brings up, and it is Unix based. It is difficult to use and hard to comprehend if not a nix user, but I didn't have any issues in downloading it, as it was an iso. All that I did was download and burn to cd.

Sorry for any confusion that my post may have caused!!