Why does low level format take so long?

[MrSlacker]

I have a Maxtor 160GB hard drive that i have to RMA. Before sending it, i decided to low level format using maxtor software. Right now it formated 1/3 of the HDD and its been working for 3 hours already. Is it normal for low level format to take so long or not? If it helps, here are my system specs
Dell 8100
P4 1.3GHz
384 RDRAM
40GB system drive
160GB slave

Thanks for your help

 

[Retro Rex]

Your comp is ass slow. Shouldn't affect the format speed though.

 

[Mad Machinist]

if the drive will format......why are you RMA'ing it???????most likely the reason it's taking so long is because of the problems you are sending it in for......

 

[MrSlacker]

i am RMAing it because it gave me errors.

 

[tiebird321]

its writing EVEY SINGLE BIT on the HD to a 1 then back to a 0 and making sure it can read it corectly
if it finds a place it cant read it marks it as unusable in a private file the hd keeps for itself
low level format should take about 3min per gigabyte
it takes 30min to do my 9gb scsi u160 drive

alot of the time if there is only 1 or 2 bad sectors a low level format can save the drive from the trash can

 

[tmarshall]

Low level does write 0's to the complete drive.

A quick format only writes to the beginning and end of a drive.

 

[MrSlacker]

thanks. it took about 12 hours. it was the first time i did low level format so i didnt know it would take so long.

 

[djnes]

Low level does write 0's to the complete drive.

A quick format only writes to the beginning and end of a drive.

No, low level formatting can't be done by end users. What you and everyone else is referring to is known as a zero-fill process. No one other than the drive makers can do a low level format.

 

[Stugots]

No, low level formatting can't be done by end users. What you and everyone else is referring to is known as a zero-fill process. No one other than the drive makers can do a low level format.

most harddrive makers have utilities for download that allow to low lvl format.

 

[djnes]

most harddrive makers have utilities for download that allow to low lvl format.

No, you really can't do low level formats anymore. The utilities are still called "low level formats" because it's a catch phrase. All they do is zero-fill the drive.

 

[Stugots]

No, you really can't do low level formats anymore. The utilities are still called "low level formats" because it's a catch phrase. All they do is zero-fill the drive.

how much more of a format would you want / need?

 

[djnes]

how much more of a format would you want / need?

My point was in reference to the terminology.

 

[Lunas]

No, you really can't do low level formats anymore. The utilities are still called "low level formats" because it's a catch phrase. All they do is zero-fill the drive.

what about those old motherboards that had the option to low level in the bios

 

[djnes]

what about those old motherboards that had the option to low level in the bios

Same thing....all zero fills. I'm not debating the point of need for zero-fills....I was just clarifying terminology. I wipe my drives everytime I do a fresh install, using gdisk from Ghost.

The reason they started using the catch phrase "low level formatting" was to tell the user it was doing more than just removing partition table data (like what fdisk does). All the data is still there and readable, as long as you have software that can reconstruct the table data. The zero-fill method goes a bit (no pun intended) farther by actually overwriting the data on the hard drive. While this data in most cases can still be recovered, it's much more cmoplicated than your run of the mill fdisking.