Mid-level format utility?

[King_Weaver]

Ok heres the scoop I have a lappy thats had about 10 different linux installs, 2 windows installs, ass loads of partitioning and formatting done to it in the past few weeks (its a long and painful story). Anyway I would like to perform a "mid-level" format on the hdd, basically I want to write 0's to entire surface as if the hdd was brand new (some utilities call this a "low-level" format but thats not really what it is because the drive geometry isnt tampered with). Heres the dilemma the only utility I know of that will allow this on a non brand specific drive is maxtor's powermax utility, only problem is I dont have a floppy drive and the cd iso version wont boot. All other brand specific utilties wont allow me to do anything. The drive is a toshiba btw and toshiba doesnt have a utility of there own. can anyone give me some advice.

 

[Bones]

Boot a Linux LiveCD and run this from a root prompt:

shred -vzn0 /dev/hda

Where /dev/hda is whatever device your hard drive is, and that's a zero after the n, not an O. It will zero the drive as you describe.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Anyway I would like to perform a "mid-level" format on the hdd, basically I want to write 0's to entire surface as if the hdd was brand new (some utilities call this a "low-level" format but thats not really what it is because the drive geometry isnt tampered with). Heres the dilemma the only utility I know of that will allow this on a non brand specific drive is maxtor's powermax utility, only problem is I dont have a floppy drive and the cd iso version wont boot.

What about DBAN? Do CDs boot in general, and only this one is giving you problems?

 

[drizzt81]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<drive you want to erase> bs=1M

 

[King_Weaver]

What about DBAN? Do CDs boot in general, and only this one is giving you problems?

yea it was the only one giving me problems. Im glad you mentioned DBAN, I had never heard of it so I did a little research and it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I downloaded the image, burned it in nero and it booted up perfectly. Its in the process of being blanked as I type. (Im on a different pc of course ). I appreciate the help from you and the other guys who responded

 

[finalgt]

Freeware Windows app: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

I've used it on SATA and IDE drives ranging from 40GB to 750GB, and it handles them all with no problems. Pretty sweet program, especially for the price.