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Author Topic: Low Level format time  (Read 3552 times)

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Offline webmanyTopic starter

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Low Level format time
« on: May 10, 2008, 05:07:35 PM »
How long does it normally take to low level format a hard drive?  I have a 4Gig drive that has been running for 9 days so far.

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Offline davideo

Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2008, 05:13:06 PM »
Quote

webmany wrote:
How long does it normally take to low level format a hard drive?  I have a 4Gig drive that has been running for 9 days so far.



I'm not absolutely sure of this so take it with a pinch of salt  :lol:

I didn't think you had to low level format larger drives only the small ones  :crazy:

Dave G  8-)
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Offline Zac67

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2008, 05:13:14 PM »
It's impossible to low level format modern drives. You probably mean zeroing all sectors.
Some IDE drives are stupid enough to destroy their servo information and/or firmware on an LLF attempt - this will damage them beyond repair.

Writing 4 GB at 1MB/s (low estimate) takes 4000 seconds - a bit more than an hour. I don't think that your attempt is still progressing. I'd abort it and check if the drive still works.
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Offline mike-

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2008, 06:27:29 PM »
Its not impossible to lowlevel em, it might work, it might not, but it can screw up the drive as you say. Especially if you abort it. Many manufacturers provide tools to "write zero to drive" and for checking and such. Atleast western digital, and seagate does.
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Offline Homer

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2008, 07:10:10 PM »
I guess Zac67 is stating that the old fashioned LLF is impossible. You can zero a new drive now with DFT disks from the manufacturer, but that is not a LLF  :-o
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Offline Zac67

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2008, 07:19:58 PM »
Yes. Wikipedia: HDD Low Level Formatting

Note that you can't possibly LLF a SCSI HDD - there's no SCSI command to do it.
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Offline pVC

Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2008, 07:30:21 PM »
As a summary. Don't try to low level format anything ever. Use partitioner programs to change geometry etc if needed and format with normal format (use quick-option if it's any bigger HD).
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Offline melott

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #7 on: May 10, 2008, 07:43:05 PM »
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Zac67 wrote:
Yes. Wikipedia: HDD Low Level Formatting

Note that you can't possibly LLF a SCSI HDD - there's no SCSI command to do it.


Hmmmm ... maybe I'm wrong but ..........

You 'DO' LLF an SCSI drive (at least thats my understanding)
But an IDE drive only gets standard format.


Mel
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Offline webmanyTopic starter

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #8 on: May 10, 2008, 07:54:30 PM »
Forgot one piece of info, it is a SCSI drive, not IDE.


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Offline melott

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #9 on: May 10, 2008, 08:03:42 PM »
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webmany wrote:
Forgot one piece of info, it is a SCSI drive, not IDE.




Ah..... :-)   now, what file system are you running.
You can't format a drive over 4 gigs with the Commodore
FastFileSystem. You said its a 4 gig drive but I'm guessing
its actually something like 4.2 gig or whatever.
There are some HD tools that will format it and install
SFS but I don't know which ones.
I'm sure someone will supply that info.

Mel
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Offline Nlandas

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2008, 11:22:08 PM »
If you are trying to recover a drive, I recommend Spinrite. Yes, it requires PC compatible hardware to run but it works on any file system. FAT, NYFS, Linux, Novell, etc.

You can only LLF drives made before they incorporated "embedded servo data" See this FAQ extract from spinrite's site. I don't work for GRC but they've saved my butt twice before.

"Can SpinRite low-level format my IDE, EIDE, or SCSI drive?

No software of any sort can truly low-level format today's modern drives. The ability to low-level format hard drives was lost back in the early 1990's when disc surfaces began incorporating factory written "embedded servo data". If you have a very old drive that can truly be low-level reformatted, SpinRite v5.0 will do that for you (which all v6.0 owners are welcome to download and run anytime). But this is only possible on very old non-servo based MFM and RLL drives with capacities up to a few hundred megabytes."
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Offline Piru

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #11 on: May 11, 2008, 12:29:25 AM »
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Now, what file system are you running.
You can't format a drive over 4 gigs with the Commodore
FastFileSystem.

Low level format has absolutely nothing to do with partitions or filesystems, or limits imposed by them. Then again, as stated before, you really can't low level format any post early-90s drives...
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Offline webmanyTopic starter

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #12 on: May 11, 2008, 02:21:51 AM »
It has been a few years, but wasn't a low level format used to add bad sectors to the bad sector list on the HD so that data wasn't written to that area?


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Offline Zac67

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Re: Low Level format time
« Reply #13 on: May 11, 2008, 09:40:55 AM »
Bad sectors remapping is automagically done by the drive on writing a bad sector (thus zeroing the whole drive helps getting rid of them). You can also use any sector level disk editor to rewrite the sectors.

The bad sectors table is completely internal to the drive and can be read through the SCSI config pages.

If the drive developed more than a few bad sectors over a shorter period, you better bin the unit as it is likely to fail/lose more data.
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