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From: knotts@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com (Tom Knotts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Don't low-level format an IDE drive
Message-ID: <80330008@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com>
Date: 8 Jan 91 04:25:40 GMT
References: <80330006@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com>
Organization: HP Labs, High Speed Electronics Dept., Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 28


>This sounds like poor design on Maxtor (or Miniscribe's) part.  I
>use Conner IDE drives and haven't had any trouble doing low-level
>formats.  If they require a special formatting program to do low-
>level formats then that should be included when you purchase the
>drive.

Yes, it does require a special formatter that I had to buy from Maxtor
(to fix it). Normally one doesn't have to do a format, as they come
pre-formatted (although someone sent me email letting me know that he
has a need to do low-level formats after disks get trashed by viruses).

I was under the impression that the special formatting software was for
all IDE drives. Are you sure that your drives are formatted OK? When I
did the format with the standard low-level formatter, it formatted, and
verified OK. Fdisk and high-level formatting worked as well. But because
the location of the bad sectors of the drive were lost, eventually I
got a fatal read/write error.

I hope your disk is OK. In the meantime, does anyone know if this is a
problem with all IDE drives, or just Maxtor/Miniscribe? The low-level
formatting software I used was from Seagate (which I thought at the time
was the standard all-in-one formatter). Does each drive require its own
special formatter, or is there a standard formatter that everyone uses?

thanks,

tom