Hello Fellow List Readers!
A Warning:
Again, I am only speaking for Maxtor Drives, (personal experience) and
probably any that use "overlay technology<??>"(see posting somewhere here on
list)
Maxtor drives cannot be LOW LEVEL FORMATTED by system bios.  If you ever
need to low level format a MAXTOR drive,  please find a copy of MaxBlast.

The tech person was warning not to low level format.  FDisk, when used
knowledgeably is fairly safe.
I low level formatted a Maxtor Drive, and it had to be replaced

Kim Hillyer

Jim Meagher wrote:

> Darrell Hefley wrote:
> >
> > I was told the other day by a network specialist that some hard drives
> > could be ruined by using fdisk on them.
>
> Your specialist was probably confused.  In the >>OLD<< days we used
> a program called HDFORMAT to set up the low level format and structure
> of the disk.  (And in the REEEEALLY OLD days, we used DEBUG to access
> the machine language routines)
>
> When technology introduced the IDE type drive, this low
> level structure was pre-installed by the factory (and still is).
> Using the HDFORMAT program on an IDE drive *WILL* ruin it.
>
> --
> Jim Meagher
> ============================
> Micro Solutions Consulting        Web Design, Network Administration
> [log in to unmask]                     Hard/software Installation, Service
> http://www.ezy.net/~microsol    410-543-8996
> ============================
>
>           PCBUILD:  http://nospin.com  or  [log in to unmask]


          PCBUILD:  http://nospin.com  or  [log in to unmask]