Low Level Format

From: Mail List <mail.list_at_analog-and-digital-solutions.com>
Date: Wed Aug 20 23:04:00 2003

Gene,

When you low level, you'll wipe out the C: partition and eliminate the
command.com file
plus the hidden system files.

If the high level format you gave C: was good enough, why not just then
format D: and then
format E:

You'll need to use the external command file FORMAT.??? ( forget whether it
was .EXE or
.COM and don't have the time to break out a book to check. Left as an
excercise for the
reader ) You need the one from the same version of DOS that your
COMMAND.COM ( and
hidden files IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS or their counterparts from IBM DOS ) came
from
( unless you try SETVER, but that is not something I had ever had the
occasion to try ).

But if you really want to low level, either use DEBUG, or a third party
package, such as
OnTrack's Disk Manager or Spin Write for example. Disk Manager will end up
asking you
to enter your bad sector mapping.


Best Regards




At 11:20 PM 8/20/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Subject: Low Level Format
>
>I want to low level format the hard drive in an 8 year old machine to
>remove three partitions etc so that I can reinstall an operating system. I
>want to make sure that all of the old data is gone. I have already done a
>format of the first partition with format c: /s
>
>All that is on C; is command.com
>
>I have a number of older versions of MS-DOS and PC DOS as well as most
>Windows versions that I could use.
Received on Wed Aug 20 2003 - 23:04:00 BST