Low Level Format

From: Innfogra_at_aol.com <(Innfogra_at_aol.com)>
Date: Thu Aug 21 00:33:00 2003

In a message dated 8/20/03 9:39:49 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
mail.list_at_analog-and-digital-solutions.com writes:


> . I've found the partitioning utility that came with
> OS2 Warp to be useful when FDISK sometimes wouldn't work.
>

Thanks for the tip. I, too, have run into partitions like you mentioned that
would not delete. I was lucky and they were MFM drives I could low level
format.

IIRC removing and replacing the partition table should effectively destroy
the links to the data on the drive. True the data bits are still there and
sophisticated analysis could get them off but I don't think it is easy without
knowing the original geometry of the drive. Then regular formatting the drive
writes a new File Allocation Table to the drive.

If it is important you could use Norton to write zeros to all the data bits
in each partition and then FDISK it. That would probably make the disk
unrecoverable.

I know there are utilities out there to low level format IDE drives but have
never found it or used it. I don't think it is common. Generally I have just
pitched bad IDE Drives into Al breakage. For Certified destruction I have used
a sledge hammer.

Paxton
Astoria, OR
Received on Thu Aug 21 2003 - 00:33:00 BST