Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

Going through a few years' worth of saved list mails I found this
(and a lot of nonsense that I posted myself).

Is this midlevel format as good as the 'low-level' format found in the 
BIOS of some computers which can take overnight?  It also lists bad 
sectors, but mke2fs -c will check for bad blocks.  We also have special 
utilities to do this for Maxtor and Seagate drives.

I found a site saying you don't need a low level format, you can just
zero out the drive with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

They would both be followed by fdisk and mke2fs (or DOS 'format').

We have saved four 200-233MHz computers with low-level format in BIOS.
We rescue badly partitioned drives with them.  dd is smaller than a 
computer.

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
> A reformat is probably your easiest option for healing the damage.
> You need a midlevel format. Boot into the floppy version of BL,
> make sure no hard drive partitions are mounted, then run
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx
>
> Replace x with appropriate drive letter.
>
> You'll then need to partition your disk. You can then format your
> partitions and install operating systems. The DOS format only formats
> one partition at a time on hard disks, and will not touch the partition
> table.
>
> David
> --
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org