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From: dd2x+@andrew.cmu.edu (David Eugene Dwiggins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Two IDE questions
Message-ID: <kc=mJym00WCSIhu1kE@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 13 May 91 23:47:10 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 19

First:

IDE Drives are VERY different.  Statements like "IDE offers better performance
than MFM and ESDI" are false simply because some IDE drives use MFM encoding,
some use RLL, etc.

As for formatting IDE drives, some do _NOT_ come preformatted from the factory.
They usually have a formatting utility in ROM if they don't, but there's no
reason why the MFM ones couldn't be formatted with an MFM utility.

And it's _NOT_ destructive (at least to the drive) to use a formatting utility
on some IDE drives.  I glitched the boot sector in my Quantum and FDISK
refused to format the drive.  I called Quantum and they said there was no
way for me to low level format the drive, and to use anything to clean it.

STOP making generalizations about IDE drives.  They're as diverse as people,
i.e. "People like broccoil" is obviously false.

David