I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

[diif]

Re: I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

I'd find out why it's become corrupted first but then just delete the partitions and reinstall Windows.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

So what is the solution for a hard drive that becomes very severely corrupt by what ever means does this mean that the drive becomes unusable or is there any remedy for this situation

Because in the past there was low level formatting was the answer now days what is the answer now

[eccerr0r]

Re: I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

basically any hard disk that has a faster than 30ms average access time cannot be low level formatted. The hard disks with 80ms average access times are stepper motor disks and they can be LLF'ed.

Undelete will work the same way on SCSI disks, SCSI is just a physical layer difference versus SATA nowadays. Undeleting on a SSD that had the blocks trimmed, however, is a different story and this is significantly harder to recover from.

There are some good reasons to LLF a disk past security delete of existing data... having the disk remap reallocated sectors more efficiently would be nice, as well as perhaps some sectors simply had a bad format and thus can't be written to - and LLF would repair that.

[Hondaman]

Re: I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

Please do not attempt to low-level format an IDE drive (or any drive after that). Making sure the heads float EXACTLY over the magnetic traces (for a spinning disc) involves factory-only equipment/calibration.

Once upon a time I read a paper leaflet that suggested you can low-level format a Travan-3/4 tape cartridge but I suggest that information may have been false. And I have no idea why anyone would want or need to low-level format a Travan cartridge.

In the old days, hard drive partitions could only end at the end of a cylinder. Of course, even as early as my 546 meg IDE drive, drives often secretly had different "zones" with more sectors per cylinder toward the outside of the platters and fewer sectors toward the inside. So the OS thought the partition ended at the end of a physical cylinder but maybe it actually ended somewhere in the middle of a cylinder -- only the drive's firmware knew for sure.

Later (above the 132 GB barrier?), I think the partition table listed the absolute sector number where each partition starts, so I guess "cylinders" were now completely irrelevant. I'm not sure how GPT works, that might display partition table data in yet another way.

If you want to obscure and overwrite data, dban is a good idea. Rescue CDs often contain GPARTED (GNU partition table editor, like the old "Partition Magic" tool from years ago). You can create a single large partition your computer can understand, then use a script to copy large files (file0001, file0002, file0003, etc) but dban is faster. Rescue discs also usually have the ability to test RAM.

I'm not sure how well rescue discs have migrated to USB sticks.

Also, it might be unnecessary or unhelpful to record zeros and ones over each bit/byte of an SSD more than one time. Back in the old days, it was said the American CIA could move the heads of a spinning drive just a small amount, and read magnetic traces of what was supposed to be deleted, and reconstruct the information. But SSDs don't have heads, so this won't be a concern.

And remember that in the old days, some IDE drives were secretly made to be incompatible with other brands, so you might have to use a CD/USB stick with only one drive in the system (the one you are trying to erase). I think CONNER hard drives were often guilty of this. And please note I am not sure how well "undelete" utilities work with old SCSI equipment. Making lots of copies of large files may be a good choice with SCSI. Of course, SCSI drives might be so rare now that nobody will try to steal data from them -- the same way car thieves stay away from the manual gearbox cars.

Hope this helps, and good luck !

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

It is not possible to low level format a modern drive.
There is an abstraction layer between the data on the drive and the interface.
The only thing you can do is write zeros or some other pattern to overwrite the data there now.
dban (open source) is one such popular tool.
For wiping SSD's it is better to use a tool that deletes the cryptographic key. (Called Secure Erase).
One problem with this is that it is hard to find a tool that works with many systems and different drives.
For DOS there exists HDDErase but it works with very few systems.

For my personal use the most successful tool is made by Lenovo for my Thinkpad T530 called:
"ThinkPad Drive Erase Utility for the Resetting the Cryptographic Key and the Erasing the Solid State Drive"

Thanks for the information that will help

[Per Hansson]

Re: I am looking for a DOS based low level format-ing hard drive and SSD drive

It is not possible to low level format a modern drive.
There is an abstraction layer between the data on the drive and the interface.
The only thing you can do is write zeros or some other pattern to overwrite the data there now.
dban (open source) is one such popular tool.
For wiping SSD's it is better to use a tool that deletes the cryptographic key. (Called Secure Erase).
One problem with this is that it is hard to find a tool that works with many systems and different drives.
For DOS there exists HDDErase but it works with very few systems.

For my personal use the most successful tool is made by Lenovo for my Thinkpad T530 called:
"ThinkPad Drive Erase Utility for the Resetting the Cryptographic Key and the Erasing the Solid State Drive"

[sam_sam_sam]

Is there a free good format-ing tool out that will work on most hard drives manufactures and you would recommend