On  7 Feb 98 at 16:23, Harsha Godavari wrote:

> On Sat, 7 Feb 1998, Jim Meagher wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> My Award Bios for a 486 has format routines available as one of sveral
> different options availble on the CMOS setup screen. Is this an LLformat
> or a DOS format. Presumably meant to be used with IDE drives ...?

  It's a low-level format, and intended to support older (MFM, RLL,
and maybe ESDI) drives, in case you have them.  Some manufacturers
are okay about letting users download their low-level format
programs, but it appears they may be manufacturer-specific.

David G


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