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From: tgoose@eng.umd.edu (Jason Garms)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Low-level format
Message-ID: <1991May30.194101.1946@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 30 May 91 19:41:01 GMT
References: <29941@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1991May29.191122.15615@cs.umn.edu>
Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (C-News)
Reply-To: tgoose@eng.umd.edu (Jason Garms)
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Lines: 26

In article <1991May29.191122.15615@cs.umn.edu>, aslakson@cs.umn.edu (Brian Aslakson) writes:
> gt5311b@prism.gatech.EDU (BHATTACHARYA,ABHIJIT) writes:
> >My roommate just lost lots of data on his MS-DOS machine because of what he
> >told me was a "bad low-level format." He also adamantly states that EVERY
> >hard drive (including ones for the Mac) should have one done if the integrity of
> >the hard drive is in question.
> 
> >My question is: what is a low-level format... do I have to worry about it or
> >is it just a PC related problem?
> 
> It is a bad bad thing to even think about low level formatting an IDE drive.
> Which are common on MS-DOS computers.  Your roommate is WRONG!
> 
> -- 
> Brian Aslakson
>     brian@cs.umn.edu (mail)
>           aslakson@cs.umn.edu (talk)
>                   mac-admin@cs.umn.edu (Me!!)

Could you possibly identify the reason that it is bad?  I'm curious because
I have heard many complaints about the reliability of IDE drives.

Thanks.

Jason Garms
tgoose@eng.umd.edu