I need some help......

[carls]

Quote sources of information, they must be out there somewhere. And not just sources of information that other users have said, something that looks remotely official would be useful.

Here is from the Swedish manual for ExpertPrep and FaaastPrep from GVP (translated from swe->eng by me):

"Low level format: By clicking on this button, you send the command for doing a low level format of the current drive. A low level format is something the hard disk manufacturer use to prepare an all-new hard disk to accept system specific structures (such as blocks and tracks). Before you can prepare or format a new hard disk, this must be low level formatted. This is made by the manufacturer and should normally not be done more than once."

So... It's already carried out by the manufacturer and you should not do it again. Then it goes on:

"WARNING! This command destroys all data on your hard disk!"

Then comes a screenshot of a requester, and lastly:

"A low level format will destroy all data on the drive. Exceptions from this are the Quantum 'S' and 'LPS' series. On these disks a low level format has no effect whatsoever."

This is from the book "Faaast Prep 2.0 / Version 2 Svensk", (c) 1992 GVP and Karlberg & Karlberg.

The above information is available on page 36 in the Swedish translation.

[carls]

Oh, and I probably should add that I have never in my whole life low-level-formatted a hard disk. I've taken disks from PCs running both Windows and Linux, put them directly in my A1200, partitioned them and then just quick formatted them. I have never had any trouble whatsoever.

I've also put Amiga formatted disks in PCs and formatted them with fdisk or Windows without any low-level format on the PC.