Hey Gang,

I have a Maxtor 40Gb ATA133 harddrive that's been acting kinda flaky as of late. My 2KPro installation has about 11 "Found" files alone, not to mention my 98SE is constantly having problems.

Yep, I'm running a dual boot with 98SE on C: and 2KPro on E:. D: and F: are used for data storage of the respective OSes.

I'm thinking that I want to reinstall both OSes whilst leaving my data on the separate partitions alone. At this point, I'm thinking that a normal format might not catch all the problems and I want to make sure I have a squeaky clean slate to start out with.

Can I low level format a partition or two while leaving the other partitions intact, or do I have to low level format the entire harddrive? Guess my question is: can I do that, will it let me, or isn't there an option for that?

And no, I'm not worried about the inherent risks of low level formatting. If I trash the drive, I'll just buy another one.

Cheers.

I am pretty sure you have to low level format a whole drive, not partitions. You might be able to use the manufacturer's utilities to zero out the partition, but I am not sure that is possible either...

Is this even possible (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatLow-c.html) on newer drives?

Budfred : Yep, I figured as much, but thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Pentachris : Hey thanks for that link. After reading that, I'm less inclined to try a LLF, however, I don't see why disk manufacturers include that option in their disk management software.

OK, so what about formatting multiple times? Think that would help or would it be a waste of time?

If you can zero out a partition it would help, but a basic format only writes over the file allocation tables so the disk seems to be fresh, so doing that multiple times on a partition would probably just be a waste of time. I would look at programs that zero out and see if any of them will do just partitions. Someone recently had a thread that lists a bunch of those programs:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22000&highlight=cleaner

You could use ERASER (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/) . It can over write a single file or a complete HDD. Or anything in between I would imagine.

You could also try Nortons InfoWipe. It can be run from the CD and does a very good job of getting rid of data.

OK, thanks peoples. Guess I'm not so worried about completely erasing data as I am that there is some physical thing going on with the drive. Just wanted to make sure the bad stuff was taken care of.

Think I will just do a standard format and reinstall. Then, see how it goes. If nothing else, I'll just get a new drive. Newegg has the same harddrive for $66 now.

Not sure if I could RMA it now. It's been awhile since I bought it. Plus then I would definitely have to do a zero fill or something. Oh well, anyways, onward and hopefully upward.

Hey MJC, Ghosthacker, et al : This is totally off the subject but just had to post this. I don't think it deserves its own thread, but wanted to mention it.

Remember awhile back my main grunt machine at work running 2KPro wouldn't go the normal route of uninstalling my USB pen drive? It would give me the message that it couldn't disengage the drive right now, and to try it later?

Anyways, that problem magically went away. Now it uninstalls the drive as it's supposed to. Don't know how, why or what for.

If your drive shows a problem on the manufacturer's diagnostic software and it is less than 3 years old, you probably can RMA it. If it isn't, you can find a 40gig drive for less than $66 if you want. OfficeMax has a 120gig drive on sale for $70 after rebates this week...

One thing to remember, what the manufacturers are now calling low-level formatting and including with their utilities is really a mid-level format (zero fill).

... record on 3½"? spools of magnetic tape. Wow! Was I embarrassed as to how my voice sounded! Then I recorded (someone elses) music. Yup, :o Then too! :D RIAA Sue me!


Zero Fill is nothing more than a constant voltage over the recording medium. It results in silence. This: ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ or ______ not -------. You'd probably hear the breaks as in the '----' sign spaces. It could be zero/plus, zero/plus like -/+ -/+, or any other overwriting for that matter.

Low level formatting is nothing more IMO. An HDD is a magnetic re-recordable medium, just like tape. The terminology on the other hand... :rolleyes:

Hey yeah, I reckon I could get a cheaper harddrive somewhere else, but is it ATA133? Kinda like the performance I get out of it, plus my motherboard supports it, so I really want to stick with ATA133. Actually, my mobo also supports SATA so when the prices come down, I'll get one of those.

I reformatted the two OS partitions last night a couple of times and then wasted four hours reinstalling. Still wound up with flakiness.

So I used the Max Blast 3 software that came with the drive and did a zero fill this morning. It didn't give me the option of just doing one partition, but rather, automatically did the whole drive. So, we'll see how that goes.

The zero fill seems to have done the job. I reinstalled a load of software over the weekend with zero problems.