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Date:      Fri, 12 Apr 1996 00:30:09 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
To:        richardc@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Richard Chang)
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: hard reading error
Message-ID:  <199604112230.AAA06832@uriah.heep.sax.de>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.PTX.3.91.960411122100.24231p-100000@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> from "Richard Chang" at Apr 11, 96 12:21:26 pm

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As Richard Chang wrote:

> > No.  No known (to me) operating system does hardware-format the hard
> > disk before installing.
> 
> 	So, is this the same as the low level format?

Very low format.  What you're usually offered as ``low-level format''
(e.g. by some BIOSes in the section ``disk utilities'') is the MFM
format command.  IDE drives don't obey it, all they do when being
faced with it is zeroing the disk, but *not* lowlevel reformatting
their surface.

As i wrote: you need a separate tool by your disk vendor.  There seems
to be a semi-standard, so it's possible that some other tool will also
work, but it must be clearly labelled as being an IDE formatting tool.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)



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