Oops! Low-level formatted my IDE drive...

[Piru]

I fear it's bricked!

Your fear is justified. I believe the drive is gone.

Is there a program to reset this information or something?

I haven't heard of any.

If I get a new one, can I use one >4GB if I only partition the first 4 gigs?

Sure.

Though personally I'd use the >4GB area aswell, it is possible with AmigaOS 3.1 aswell (either with scsi.device 43.x or IDEFix. SFS, PFS3, or FFS with TD64 patch as the filesystem).

[Piru]

@ferrellsl

I've low-level formatted IDE drives on many occasions in the PC world.

No you haven't.

You've just zero filled the drives (that's what 'Low Level Format' means these days). These tools will not help here.

The PC Guide: Low-Level Format, Zero-Fill and Diagnostic Utilities

[Piru]

@ferrellsl

Well, I beg to differ. As I said earlier I have low-level formatted many drives in the PC world. It was not a zero-fill operation. I have done this on old MFM drives and older IDE drives.

Very old SCSI drives could be low level formatted, however, to my knowlege not IDE drives (I know very old MFM drives could be low level formatted, but didn't these have custom controllers aswell? They weren't IDE IIRC). Got any documentation about these IDE low level format tools?

Maybe the guy who started this thread actually did a zero-fill operation and believes it was a low-level format

No, since zero filled drives appear in HDToolBox just fine. And it doesn't make the drive emit "repetitive noise". Old HDToolBox has Low Level Format option: It sends the LLF command to the drive and waits for completion. Modern IDE drives ignore the command, but older ones might die. It's probable he tried the LLF option of HDToolBox.

[Piru]

Well, I'll investigate. It's interesting that Seagate themselves say this, however.

[Piru]

@ptek

Hey, a low lever formatted Amiga HD will never ber recovered on a PC since the Amiga file system is completly unknown to a PC recovey program !

Low level format of the drive has nothing to do with filesystems. Thus, this is not true.

[Piru]

So in essense this really isn't low level format either. Also, it will only work for old drives anyway.

Here's the final word (Seagate Disk Manager is really Ontrack software).

Regardless, since the drive probably is dead(*) anyway, it wouldn't hurt to try this... :-)

(*) dead as in:

If there is an inappropriate translation for low level formatting, error in the ROM, or an error reading the ROM, or an error or interruption occurs during the low-level format of the drive, the drive may be rendered unusable. Re-doing the low-level format will not fix this, if this happens it can only be fixed by the hard drive manufacturer.

[Piru]

I know for a fact that it works on IDE drives manufactured as late as 2002. I used it (disk Manager) successfully on several drives that were less than 12 GB in size.

Even the link you provided says it's possible but not recommended. Disk Manager does both, low-level format and zero fill. If they were one in the same, then why even have it as an option under the utilities menu?

If you read the FAQ entry carefully it also says:

In many cases, the hard drive manufacturer has made the drive's electronics in such a way that a command to low-level format will be ignored or treated as a zero-fill command; these drives cannot be low-level formatted except by the drive manufacturer.

Thus, it's quite possible that the drives actually do zerofill, and no low level format. There is no way of knowing what the older drive does.

I seriously doubt any newish drive does real LLF.

[Piru]

why have a low-level format option in your software if all you're going to do is a zero-fill?

Because at some point some anchient drives actually did support low level format?

The user will just have to try it on his drive and see what happens.

And the user has absolutely no way of knowing what happens. It could be LLF, it could be zerofill, it could be nothing. Just because some program has the LLF option doesn't mean that drives actually support it.

I know that the drives I used Disk Manager on exhibited the same symptoms mentioned by the guy who started this thread....Disk Manager low-level formattted them for me and then I was able to do a high-level format and re-install my OS (which was Windows by the way).

OT, but: Windows can get fooled if the MBR is FUBAR. Just clearing the first 512 bytes of the drive usually have exactly the same effect as zerofilling the whole drive (except that it takes couple of milliseconds instead of several hours). Alternatively you can boot from the windoze CD, go to recover terminal and fixboot /mbr. MBR FUBARed drives don't make repetitive noise, though.

No one seems to question that the guy who started this thread low-level formatted his IDE drive ,so why is it such a huge stretch to believe that Seagate/OnTrack Disk Manager can also low-level format drives?

It's fairly sensible to assume he used the HDToolBox Low Level Format option. It was supposed to be used with SCSI only, and has since been removed from HDToolBox completely.

I am not denying that this OnTrack tool can low level format (if supported by the drive). I am questioning if any drive since 80s actually does LLF (according to Ontrack some drive might actually just do zerowrite instead of actual LLF).

[Piru]

Well, my point is that it can hurt. But naturally if the next step would be binning the drive... at that point, why not.