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Low level format your hard-drive on windows xp ... question.

I

IDF

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2004
Messages
202
There is no DOS anymore and i almost forgot the command it used to be Format (drive) :/s or something.

Is the load up when it automatically asks you to format and gives you a slower option then the fast one in xp considered a low level format ? Or do i have to erase all zero's in my drive to get a low level format in windows xp ?


Thanks to whom reply ..
 
the only way you can low level these days( which isnt really low leveling, low leveling was when it wrote info on tracks sectors, ect, all that is done at the factory) is to get the manufacturers disk diagnostic prog to write zero's to the drive

the quick format is just writing zeros to the begenning and end of the disk, the equavalent of erasing the FAT table in fat32, id ont know what the "directory" per se in NTFS is called, but it just deletes refreces to your data, not your actual data

the other option does the same thing as quick, only it does a full disk scan as well. that is why it takes longer.

PS: your sig is a bit long, there is a 10-line limit here (this includes breaks)
 
Ive heard of programs that can recover formatted data.

When i format i like it to be clean so i guess writing zero's to the drive will take care of this , and will writing zero's remove nasty viruses that a virus program doesnt in regards to it staying in the hard drive.

Signature fixed thanks for telling me the rules.
 
all the programs are doing is looking at the data that was never erased, if you write zeros to the drive, it is indeed gone forever. regular windows formats dont delete the data so when you write the drive again, you are just overwriting the data as opposed to deleting it. writing zeros takes FOREVER on a modern huge hard drve.
 
lithium726 said:
all the programs are doing is looking at the data that was never erased, if you write zeros to the drive, it is indeed gone forever. regular windows formats dont delete the data so when you write the drive again, you are just overwriting the data as opposed to deleting it. writing zeros takes FOREVER on a modern huge hard drve.
Click to expand...

i use killdisk all the time, www.killdisk.com, and it doesnt take *that* long. if you start it before going to bed at night itll be done in the morning, or only a couple hours for smaller drives.
 
You could use a self-booting linux distribution and use the "dd" command to erase the disk. Unix-like operating systems treat everything as a file, so "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx" would write zeroes to the disk (where x is the drive you want to erase; a is first, b is second, etc.). "dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hdx" would write random garbage to the disk. It's pretty quick, too.
 
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