From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 8 15:14:51 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D53E837B400 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 15:14:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from agamemnon.cnchost.com (agamemnon.cnchost.com [207.155.252.31]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E735B43E31 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 15:14:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bakul@bitblocks.com) Received: from bitblocks.com (adsl-209-204-185-216.sonic.net [209.204.185.216]) by agamemnon.cnchost.com id SAA11239; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 18:14:35 -0400 (EDT) [ConcentricHost SMTP Relay 1.14] Message-ID: <200207082214.SAA11239@agamemnon.cnchost.com> To: Julian Elischer Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: offtopic: low level format of IDE drive. In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 08 Jul 2002 13:47:48 PDT." Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 15:14:33 -0700 From: Bakul Shah Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > One of my FreeBSD development boxes had a hernia last week when it lost > power while writing to disk. The drive wrote out garbage to a track. > > I want to reformat the drive, (low level) but the bios doesn't have any > support to do this (In the past That is how I did this). > The machiine has 1 CD drive and no floppy.. > > anyone with any ideas as to how one can reformat a hard drive feel free to > lend me a clue.. Modern drives have low level formatting done at the "factory" due to drives having multiple zones (different sectors/track in each zone) and other horrible things done to sqeeze out many more bits of storage. They even retired the "FORMAT" opcode from ATA standard! I think your best bet may be to see if you can find a windows program that will "reinit" the disk. Your disk's vendor may provide such a utility, usually mislabelled "DiscWizard" or something for free. I am ready for Millipede :-) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message