From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Apr 11 15:51:27 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id PAA19969 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 11 Apr 1996 15:51:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id PAA19963 for ; Thu, 11 Apr 1996 15:51:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id AAA28893; Fri, 12 Apr 1996 00:50:43 +0200 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.11/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id AAA21378; Fri, 12 Apr 1996 00:50:42 +0200 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.7.5/8.6.9) id AAA06832; Fri, 12 Apr 1996 00:30:09 +0200 (MET DST) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199604112230.AAA06832@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: hard reading error To: richardc@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Richard Chang) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 00:30:09 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: from "Richard Chang" at Apr 11, 96 12:21:26 pm X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8a] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As Richard Chang wrote: > > No. No known (to me) operating system does hardware-format the hard > > disk before installing. > > So, is this the same as the low level format? Very low format. What you're usually offered as ``low-level format'' (e.g. by some BIOSes in the section ``disk utilities'') is the MFM format command. IDE drives don't obey it, all they do when being faced with it is zeroing the disk, but *not* lowlevel reformatting their surface. As i wrote: you need a separate tool by your disk vendor. There seems to be a semi-standard, so it's possible that some other tool will also work, but it must be clearly labelled as being an IDE formatting tool. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)