Real Quick ? if anyone is online.....

[Muad'Dib]

Hi. I'm formatting my hd now (or at least will be hopefully) so I can move it to my new system and was wondering what the command is to do a low speed format. I remember reading somewhere that these types of formats help in the long run. I can't remember the command or the place I found that at though. If there is a difference, please let me know. I want to start this tonight....

Thanks,
Dimitri

[Buuri]

If you mean low level format, that can be found in mobo's BIOS, but it sounds like something you can destroy your HDD with

_
B

[Jammrock]

NEVER low-level format a newer (most, if not all, EIDE and DMA based drives) IDE drive, unless you have a low-level format tool written by the manufacture of the hard drive for that specific model!!! Look in almost any new IDE hard drive manual and it will specifically say, DO NOT LOW LEVEL FORMAT THIS HARD DRIVE! Go online, read the manual, look for utilities, but NEVER low-level format unless the documentation for your drive says it is safe.

SCSI drives are different and most can be low-level formatted. Once again, read the instructions first. I know it is hard for many of us to do this, but it can save you a lot of time and cash.

Jammrock

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Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...

[HedsSpaz]

I think what your looking for is soemthing like this.

format C: /u

does an unconditional format. Meaning that it actually overwrites all of the bits of data on the drive and resets them all to 0.
Actually "format C:" does an unconditional format by default.

Instead of a "format C: /q" which does a quick format which merely erases the FAT.
If you want to do a serious powerful format try and find a copy of DriveWizard or something. You can do all sorts of fun different formats then. All of which are safe to do on IDE drives.

HedsSpaz

[SCompRacer]

You can safely low level format SCSI drives but it gets iffy on IDE unless the HD mfr. has a utility for it. It is usually a last resort if a regular format just won't do. Just do a format off of a startup disk.