Low level format laptop

[Long Haired Hippie Phreek]

How do you low level format a laptop hard drive?

[Richard_Cranium72]

Per Quantums' web site, modern HD's cannot be "low level formatted" as in the old days.

"You cannot low-level format the disk drive. The servo, sector layout, and defect-management information contained in the low-level format is designed to last the life of the drive. This information and the way it is written cannot be duplicated in any way outside of the factory. Drives manufactured today ignore low-level format routines.

Some manufactures do have routines they label as a low-level formatter. These routines actually perform a write, read, and verify of the drive's user data sectors, they don't actually low-level format the disk drive. However, these type of utilities can be used to purge the drive of a corrupted master boot record, a boot block virus, or to clear any recoverable bad sectors or clusters. Quantum's DataEraser utility has these capabilities and can be downloaded free from our web site."->>
http://www.quantum.com/support/knowledge_base.htm

There are several ways to "remove" data or "overwrite" data depending upon your wishes.

Post back with the mfg of the laptop and someone will assist

DrVette

[Jeff7]

Two nice little utilities:

ZAP (http://myfreeoffice.com/jeffelec/auction/zap.exe) quickly wipes the file allocation and partition tables.

WIPE (http://myfreeoffice.com/jeffelec/auction/wipe.exe) not only ZAPs the drive, but it also writes zeroes to every bit of the drive.

If you want to buy a good utility, head over to www.grc.com (http://www.grc.com) and buy Spinrite 5.0. It is a really excellent disk repair utility.