| Jon Forrest 2004-11-08, 5:45 pm |
| Robert Wessel wrote:
> Jon Forrest <forrest@ce.berkeley.edu> wrote in message news:<418A685D.3020907@ce.berkeley.edu>...
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> Not exactly true. All current IDE hard drives have all the hardware
> and firmware on board to do the low level format. The manufacturer
> just doesn't tell people how to get at it.
I'm surprised word hasn't gotten out on how to do it.
Not even SpinRite tries to do it (see below).
> As a practical matter you
> cannot do a low level format of a modern hard drive with anything
> other than the exact set of heads that it will live its life with.
Sure, but since heads are never changed I don't see this being
a major obstacle. Also, why can SCSI controllers do it?
The real question is why somebody would want to do a low level format
in the first place. The only reason I can think of would be if the
disk has developed a bunch of bad blocks, but chances are that's a sign
of future failure, and low level formatting would only postpone the
inevitable. A low level format doesn't erase all the data on the disk,
but it makes the data very hard to find. However, people with big
security problems would not accept a low level format as a way
to erase a disk.
In any case, I stand corrected. It was just a guess.
Jon
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