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