[ale] low level format

[Brian Mathis]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 5:29 PM, Chuck Payne <terrorpup at gmail.com> wrote:
> I haven't done a low level format since the days when I ran only SCSI.
> Can I do a low level format on SATA Drives? I am trying to see if a
> drive is really toast, or can be save. I am running Linux on the host
> that it is on.
>
> --
> Terror PUP a.k.a
> Chuck "PUP" Payne


The discussion seems to have taken a turn directly into "secure
wiping" which has nothing to do with what most people are talking
about when they say "low level format", and even when people say that,
that's not what they really want either.  There's almost never a time
when you wanted to, or even could, do a real "low level" format.
That's a factory-only operation.

You mentioned that you want to see if your drive is bad.  In Linux,
the way to do this is to run the "badblocks" program.  You can choose
a destructive or non-destructive.  You can run it on a whole device,
or a partition.  You can also run it through e2fsck, if you have an
existing filesystem on there.

Another option is "spinrite", which works really well and can almost
perform miracles for recovering data.  It's able to locate bad blocks
as well as recover data.  Spinrite is a commercial product though.


❧ Brian Mathis