Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Can anyone recommend a low level formatting tool thats half decient and doesnt have to be free either.

I have tried the manufacturers one and for some reason its not finding the drive yet the bios is.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

have a look at Hiren's boot CD, or SystemRescueCD http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

they have tools like Ranish http://www.ranish.com/part/

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Why do you want to do a low-level format? Thought doing that went out years ago!

Personally I'd be inclined to use the manufacturers own tools to do that, which I see you've already tried - is the BIOS up-todate?

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

another shout for Hiren's. it holds a very useful tool set in one easy place. create a bootable USB pendrive with it and away you go. I use it pretty much every week at work for testing something or other.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

drive has bad clusters and wanna see if it will mark them as unusable as my sister doesnt wish to replace the drive now as my neice is having a new laptop for christmas.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Modern drives are built with spare sectors and the drive's firmware brings them into use as required and marks off bad sectors. If it's run out of spare sectors the drive is in a bad way and probably heading for a failure sometime soon.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

if it fails it fails and ive told her that but if i can patch it up just until christmas its even better.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

If you've access to a copy of 'Spinrite' run that on it. Level 2 will attempt to read and rewrite all sectors. It will also attempt to replace bad sectors. Details here:

http://www.grc.com/srrecovery.htm

That's the nearest thing to 'magic' you'll find.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Low-level format will break the mechanism used for that so I wouldn't suggest it.

Spinrite or MHDD as DaiNasty said. You want to do a surface scan & wipe not a low level format.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Lsainsbury most of the manufacturers software gives a low level format function.

I performed Low Level formats on two of my seagate drives in order to destroy the data on the before i sent back to get replaced and Seagate Support told me to do this.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Errr...post #3 ;)

Don't think I've ever sent a drive back to the manufacturer.

I've only ever had one drive fail on me - three points to anybody who can guess the manufacturer / model of that one!

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

i sent two back to seagate and they replaced with a different model after it was found the model i had it was problematic with firmware and was causing my system to lockup.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Ah yeah - the firmware that screwed up.

Re: Low Level Formatting Tools
 

Lee's correct, it's no longer possible to do a low level format as it was with early drives. The manufacturer's software fakes it by reading the re-allocated sector table and blanking the sectors in use.

You simply cannot get to the low level any longer and as Lee said, if you could it would break the drive.