About 2 years ago I met a virus which resided in boot area and mbr area, antivirus did not help, format did not help and fdisk /mbr did not help too. I think it is better to use some disk editor such as Norton Disk Editor from boot floppy and edit mbr manually (set all bytes to 00 then use fdisk /mbr) than using low level format, which can be very problematic. Best way to protect hdd from boot viruses is to make a boot floppy with backup of mbr a boot record made by some antivirus. When virus found then simply boot from floppy and recover boot and mbr and all is fine :-) Mike Belicek mailto:[log in to unmask] > -----Original Message----- > From: Vic Hlushak [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] > Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 1999 8:04 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Low Level Format > > I have been doing this for 20 years and I have never seen or even heard > from > a reputable source that Fdisk /MBR can damage a HDD. All it does is > overwrite the Master Boot Record. > > Vic, A+ > > > -----Original Message----- > You can rewrite this area using FDISK /MBR, but with some > > viruses this may permanently damage the drive. > > David G > > PCBUILD's List Owner's: > Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]> > Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]> PCBUILD's List Owner's: Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]> Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>