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To find information or download utilities that are specific to your Make/Model of HardDrive (if available) try:
Some of the more popular manufactures:
Western Digital ~ http://support.wdc.com/
Maxtor ~ http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
Seagate ~ http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html
Quantum ~ Now supported by Maxtor.
IBM ~ http://www.storage.ibm.com/hddredirect.html?supcallbox
Low Level Formatting
What does "low level formatting" mean?
Actually the term "low level" is a bit of a misnomer. The low level process first used years ago in MFM hard drives bears little resemblance to what we now call a "low level format" for today's ATA (IDE) drives. A better name for today's low level formatting utility is intermediate- or mid-level formatting. This is sometimes referred to as the "initialize" or "re-initialize" process. The basic purpose of a mid-level format is to erase everything currently on the drive.
Why would I want to low level format my drive?
The most common reasons to low level format an ATA (IDE) hard drive are:
The drive has contracted a virus that cannot be removed without destroying the boot sector. The drive is developing bad sectors at an increasing rate. You are changing from one operating system to another and wish to remove everything from the drive.You want to 100% destroy data on a hard drive before disposing of it.
The following utilities are stand-alone Low-Level Utilities (See Other Methods further down) : READ THE SMALL PRINT: You're on your own -- If you don't know what you're doing, then don't do it! Low Level Hard Disk Format and Surface Scan (LLFORMAT.EXE) v1.3 by Western Digital (1987) ~ 8Kb Download
Low Level Format Utility (LF.EXE) v1.0 by QDI Software (1997) ~ 21Kb Download
BCWipe Is a Wipe Utility for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 (Freeware part of BestCrypt Data Protection System) Jetico, Inc., 1993-1999 ~ Which also contains a standalone utility called BCWipePD (20Kb Download) which shreds data according to U.S. Department of Defense recommendations to destroy data (DoD 5200.28-STD) : seven pass extended character rotation wiping. Download BCWipePD (20Kb Download) and read text file for full extensive details on usage. (Recommended)
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Do not run a Low-Level Format Utility in Windows 3.x, Windows 95 or Windows NT. Do not interrupt low-level formatting by rebooting or by powering off the system. Interruption of low-level format may result in an unusable drive
Caution: Low-Level formatting is not required on a new hard drive. Low-level formatting is typically used when the hard drive has some problems. Low-level formatting the hard drive may correct some errors. Serious disk errors may not be correctable. Low-Level formatting should be used as a last resort only. The time to low-level format a hard drive will vary by manufacturer and model. Larger drives may take over 1 hour to low-level format. All data will be lost on the hard drive after low-level format is completed.
Other Methods of Clearing Data, Viruses or Remarking Bad Sectors
FDISK and FORMAT are part of MS-DOS (And most other types) and should be used direct from a clean virus free bootable floppy disk, If you do not have one create one now..Or download one from the PowerLoad Bootdisk Project or Bootdisk.Com
FDISK/MBR
/MBR ~ Recreate Master Boot Record on disk 1This function is handy when an virus has infected the Master Boot Record. ~ With /MBR you can wipe-out the virus.
FORMAT C: /C
/C ~ Causes FORMAT to retest bad clusters, otherwise FORMAT will mark the clusters as bad but will not retest them.
FORMAT C: /U or FORMAT C: /U/S
/U parameter performs an UNCONDITIONAL format, which DESTROYS every byte of data on a disk by overwriting it with with blank spaces
/U/S adds the System Files on completion
Also See
FAT32, FDISK & FORMAT Guide ~ Notes on usage
FDISK Messages with Windows 98 ~ Messages you will see when using FDISK
Microsoft File Systems ~ The Differences Between FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS