Low-Level Formatting

I have a Windows 95 platform that has 2 hard drives, 1st is C and E, 2nd is D, F G. Both are Western Digital IDEs with all partitions 2 gig. The 2nd drive is going bad. When it gets hot, the hard drive starts to clunk and search (if you are using "D ", or after a longer period, if you are using F or G); if you then reboot it, it will not boot. However, it will reboot if I let the whole thing sit and cool for a couple of hours.

The D Drive has some files that if you try to read them anytime you hear clunk noises. Also you cannot run Scandisk successfully on the D Drive...you can on the F and G drives.

I think the problem is that drive 2 has warped due to heat, and when it gets hot this warps it just enough more that the system cannot find the volume boot info, which I think is on the outermost portion, where warpage is the greatest.

I would like to know if it is possible to low-level format the hard drive. If I could do that, I could replace the data on D, F, and G. I have written the essential data on D to a CDRW; I have ghostedF and G to CDRW. Are there any Win 95 apps that can do this for me?

Alternatively I would wish to move the drive boot info to another logical drive, but I don't think I can do this.

Thanks,

Tom

 

Tom - save yourself a lot of time, hassle and frustration - get rid of that puppy. I think you already know its just a matter of time.

 

Low-level formatting writes all zeros on the disc, and the old board had a posting that showed a script for that procedure. I don't believe ths script is OS specific. Sorry, I don't have a reference since the old board was maliciously hacked and files were destroyed.

I never came to any understanding why one wants to low-level format as there is forensic software that can bring out sensitive or secretive data that one thought would be unrecoverable.

Regular formatting changes the first character of a byte and is space ready to be overwritten. Just overwriting zeros as opposed to overwriting ones and zeros does not in my opinion make much difference.

 

I agree bigtime with rockster. If you are hearing noises from the drive(s), back up your important data.....quickly.... and look into replacing the drive.
You probably do not have much time.

I've been there toooooo many times with Western Digital (To be specific) drives.
Just don't lose your data.

Dale

 

I think you are right -- tell me, are EIDE drives compatible with systems which had IDEs? It looks like everyone sells EIDEs now. My motherboard is a Pentium 200 -- is it EIDE-compatible?

 

Tom - the only thing you have to worry about is what size hard drive will your bios handle and even thats not a real issue if you don't have any hangups about using a drive mfg's easy bios or whatever utility they suggest using to get around the drive restictions. Personally, I don't like those utilities, but .... thats me.