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From: conslt01@zeus.unomaha.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: IDE drive-- is it really UNFORMATTABLE?
Message-ID: <8173.27bd48d5@zeus.unomaha.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 91 20:59:33 GMT
Lines: 35

I have a question for you people out there who are technical experts.
I recently bought a new Packard-Bell 80386-25 system that came equipped
with a 124 meg IDE hard drive.  A small notice came with the system
that said "THIS DISK HAS BEEN PREFORMATTED AT THE FACTORY..." 
talking about low and high level formats...
and goes on to say...
"DO NOT USE ANY FORMAT PROGRAMS OR DEBUG PROGRAMS ON THIS HARD DRIVE.
IF THIS DRIVE NEEDS TO BE FORMATTED, IT..."must be sent back in to the
factory where they will charge you an arm and a leg to do it, I'm sure.

I would like to know what constitutes a debug program (Norton?) and if
this is true?  Are there drives out there that cannot be formatted by the
user?  I would like to know, because I have files on my hard drive I would
like to put on a partitioned drive, but the program they gave me to 
partition the drive states that I cannot repartition the drive without
reformatting the drive.  I have DOS version 4.x

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.  Thank you in advance,
						John G. Schroeder
						Conslt01@zeus.unomaha.edu
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