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From: dj@ctron.com (DJ Delorie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: IDE Drives - low level format?
Keywords: HD, IDE, format
Message-ID: <1500@balrog.ctron.com>
Date: 15 May 91 16:08:57 GMT
References: <21399@brahms.udel.edu>
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In article <21399@brahms.udel.edu>, sguerke@brahms.udel.edu (Stephen Guerke) writes:
> One of our faculty members has an IDE drive that is giving him bad
> sector readings.  He is going to run Norton 5.0 Disk Doctor on it to
> mark the bad sectors, however the Norton Calibrate program, which sets
> the interleave and will do a low level format, will not work on an IDE
> drive.  Is there a low level format program available, that will work
> on and IDE?  Any suggestions and recommendations will be gratefully
> appreciated. ( I don't know the brand or model of the drive, if that
> is necessary info I can get it and post.)

According to Conner Peripherals engineers, IDE drives ignore the
format command, for whatever reasons.  The only way to format them for
sure is to have the funky hardware that talks to the drive through the
connector at the front, and convince it that it was just assembled.
The drive will then go through a 72-hour initial self test, during
which it will reformat the drive.

DJ
dj@ctron.com