Low level format utility for the A1200

[Fabie]

Hi

my A1200 hardisk have damaged sectors at the end
so
Im looking for a low level format hardisk utility cause HDtoolbox doesn not works with my hardisk

any help?

[thomas]

IDE hard drives cannot be low-level formatted, unless the manufacturer offers a specific tool for this. Those specific tools usually are for x86 only.

Hard drives usually manage bad blocks internally. If a hdd reports a bad block to the operating system, it usually has already so many of them, that they cannot be handled any more. The disk is dying and should be replaced soon.

[DH]

You can still get LLF utilities for the PC (usually manufacturers specific), although you'd have to place the drive into that instead. Be WARNED, Using such tools destroys the data completely and you shouldn't be able to recover anything, also, If you select the wrong drive, you're going to be in trouble.

I go along with thomas though, the disk is dying and really needs replacing. LLF is a thing of the past and is not really required anymore for the standard user, unless you're trying to hide something.

If you don't really know what you're doing, get a new drive and forget about LLF.

[Jope]

Even when hiding something, it is better to fill the drives with 0 instead of attempting any kind of format, lowlevel or highlevel..

www.dban.org

[DH]

That's true not that we're encouraging people to get stuff that require hiding on the drive at a later time

[Fabie]

sorry but I not agree with us guys
Last month I did a low level format a 120 gb maxtor hardisk with damaged sectors
The low level format cured all bad sectors and the disk now is working very fine...even smart reports the drive OK
so that hardisk was not dying
I used a utility named "HDD low level format tool" and it seems that can low level format any hardisk from any manufacturer
that program can be downloaded here

http://hddguru.com/

on that site there are the best hardisk tools

OK

I see that there aren't tools for amiga so I must use that utility to try to repair my A1200 hardisk....also I need to buy a 2.5 hardisk adapter to connect it on my PC

thanks anyways

[DH]

While it's impossible to perform an LLF on most modern hard drives (since the mid-1990s) outside the factory, the term "low-level format" is still being used (erroneously) for what should be called the reinitialization of a hard drive to its factory configuration (and even these terms may be misunderstood). Reinitialization should include identifying (and sparing out if possible) any sectors which cannot be written to and read back from the drive, correctly. The term has, however, been used by some to refer to only a portion of that process, in which every sector of the drive is written to; usually by writing a zero byte to every addressable location on the disk, sometimes called zero-filling.
The present ambiguity in the term "low-level format" seems to be due to both inconsistent documentation on web sites and the belief by many users that any process below a "high-level (file system) format" must be called a low-level format. Instead of correcting this mistaken idea (by clearly stating such a process cannot be performed on specific drives), various drive manufacturers have actually described reinitialization software as LLF utilities on their web sites. Since users generally have no way to determine the difference between a true LLF and reinitialization (they simply observe running the software results in a hard disk that must be partitioned and "high-level formatted"), both the misinformed user and mixed signals from various drive manufacturers have perpetuated this error. Note: Whatever possible misuse of such terms may exist (search hard drive manufacturers' web sites for all these terms), many sites do make such reinitialization utilities available (possibly as bootable floppy diskette or CD image files), to both overwrite every byte and check for damaged sectors on the hard disk.

You are probably not actually doing a true LLF

EDIT: Thomas's post is 100% accurate

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Fabie

I see that there aren't tools for amiga so I must use that utility to try to repair my A1200 hardisk....also I need to buy a 2.5 hardisk adapter to connect it on my PC

Yep, no Amiga tools exist for modern hard disk maintenance. Old drives may not be compatible with modern tools. Good luck, hope you can get those bad sectors remapped.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Fabie

... Last month ....
The low level format cured all bad sectors and the disk now is working very fine...even smart reports the drive OK
so that hardisk was not dying

So, it's been working without reporting errors for "a month"...
therefor...

The hard disk was not dying...

Hmmmm

Can't see any issues with that logic!

desiv

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by desiv

So, it's been working without reporting errors for "a month"...
therefor...

The hard disk was not dying...

Hmmmm

Can't see any issues with that logic!

desiv

Exactly what I was thinking! HD's are so cheap nowadays that I really don't understand why someone would try to "resurrect" a HD with bad blocks... Then again, it's not my data.

[Loedown]

Hard drives don't go back sector for nothing, sooner or later it will fail, I watched a Maxtor slowly self destructing over a period of months, fortunately, I didn't own it.

Maxtor are crap drives, seen 3 fail with heads stuck /fused to the disk platters.

Paul

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Loedown

Maxtor are crap drives, seen 3 fail with heads stuck /fused to the disk platters.

At last, someone that shares my dislike of Maxtor drives!

This goes back a long way. I had a Maxtor 5¼-inch half-height SCSI hard drive fail for no other reason that its poor build quality.

I've steered clear of their drives ever since.

[Boo Boo]

Maxtor does have its own tool called MaxBlast

[Fabie]

Originally Posted by Loedown

Hard drives don't go back sector for nothing, sooner or later it will fail, I watched a Maxtor slowly self destructing over a period of months, fortunately, I didn't own it.

Maxtor are crap drives, seen 3 fail with heads stuck /fused to the disk platters.

Paul

some maxtor drives are really good....my sister still have her 16 gb maxtor in her computer since 2002...it's a duron 900 mhz.....the drive still works perfect after 7-8 years ...My sister still use that computer almost every day for chat and other stupid things

however I had a 40 gb maxtor drive which died in 2 years

I think that all depends of the model,stress of the drive and other factors

also I know that hardisks on women computers last longer than hardisks on males' computers

[Jope]

Basically, all makers of hard drives have failed on me, so I no longer tell anyone to steer clear of any particular brand.

Instead it's more constructive to:
- buy a drive with a 5 year warranty or better
- take backups, 'cause the drive might fail anyway

[Fabie]

Originally Posted by Jope

Basically, all makers of hard drives have failed on me, so I no longer tell anyone to steer clear of any particular brand.

Instead it's more constructive to:
- buy a drive with a 5 year warranty or better
- take backups, 'cause the drive might fail anyway

which manufacturer offers 5 years of warranty?
anyways
maybe the new solid state hardisks are more durable...who knows.... not have mechanical parts...
In a few years I think the answer...which is last longer...the common hardisk or the solid state hardisk
personally I don't have a solid state hardisk but I will purchase one soon
but for my A1200 I like a common hardisk instead a cf flash adapter,looks original and retro for me

bye

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by Fabie

some maxtor drives are really good....my sister still have her 16 gb maxtor in her computer since 2002...it's a duron 900 mhz.....the drive still works perfect after 7-8 years ...My sister still use that computer almost every day for chat and other stupid things

however I had a 40 gb maxtor drive which died in 2 years

I think that all depends of the model,stress of the drive and other factors

also I know that hardisks on women computers last longer than hardisks on males' computers

I have a 250 Mb Quantum drive that works perfectly, I'll bet it's older than your sister's Duron system.

Maxtor are shit drives, I categorically believe that, from all evidence gained.

Paul

[Fabie]

Originally Posted by Loedown

I have a 250 Mb Quantum drive that works perfectly, I'll bet it's older than your sister's Duron system.

Maxtor are shit drives, I categorically believe that, from all evidence gained.

Paul

I believe you....about your quantum drive
I know that some hardisks last 10-12 years or more
I have a friend with his A1200 and his original 80mb seat gate HD still working...but he not use the A1200 very often

[rkauer]

I have two 40Mb and one 80Mb original HDs from A1200 era which I pulled from different Amigas for upgrade reasons. They all still working without a byte of error.

[Dimlow]

Just a note from my observations over the years....I have been working in IT since 1994 in all this time have had only seen one drive fail and i must have managed 100's to 1000's of them. Yes i have had drive corruption and other problems that have been the cause of the drive corruptions, but no real failures. That drive that did fail on me was dropped 1 inch onto a hard floor whilst running.

A lot of the drives have been running 24/7 for many years. HD tech seems to have matured quite well.

Usually when i get corruption a quick reformat does the trick.

Most drives i have used have been replaced not because they failed, but because the machine is replaced/redundant/retired from old age etc.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Dimlow

Just a note from my observations over the years....I have been working in IT since 1994 in all this time have had only seen one drive fail and i must have managed 100's to 1000's of them.

Really? You're not that familiar with the famous "click of death" sound?

Even though you've only been around 1000's (yes, for some of us, that is only.. :-), I'd still expect you to have run across that more than once...

The failure rate is pretty good (or lack of failure rate I suppose), but it happens...
I think we see more of it on the server side, as we're working the drives harder. But I've personally heard the click of death at least 5 times on desktops, and I'm not a desktop guy per se..
(Then again, I was doing this for a while already in 94. You might not even remember "g=c800:5"... ;-)

Consider yourself lucky!

desiv