Low level formatting needs to be done on 100’s of Hard disks

Asked By BhupathiGrane 350 points N/A Posted on - 04/26/2011

Low level formatting needs to be done on 100 pictures of hard drives. What's the easiest way?

We are in the process of sending a few 100 hard drives to Delhi office. To be sure of the data security, we need to format all, including the ones using our company content.

We just upgraded our machines with 500 GB HDD and the old ones are needed to be sent to the head office.

Can anyone help us find out the easiest ways that we can try?

• Status: Open
• Question Views: 2634
• Answer Count: 2
• Vote Up 24 Vote Down

• Answer Accepted: Yes
• Question Category: Hard Drives

Best Answer by theleo

Go To Solution

Best Answer

Best Answer

Answered By theleo 0 points N/A #88563

Low level formatting needs to be done on 100’s of Hard disks

You can try any of the following solutions:

 

Solution 1

 

This Low Level Format process supports operating systems like Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP. This process includes many solutions like removing hidden virus on your boot sectors to replace any damaged FAT tables and to  separate bad sectors that is unused.

 

At first, you must have the necessary drivers to restore your hard drive. Then, you should back up all your important data on drive which you wish to operate in low level format. After doing this, follow these steps:

 

Step 1: The floppy drive has to be booted up with a good emergency boot disk like MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98. A Windows 98 boot disk is best for this.

 

Step 2: Go to A:> prompt, run F DISK. Type F DISK and hit Enter. You will get options like:

 

•     All assigned drives in extended partitions
•     Any extended partitions
•     The primary partition

 

Step 3: Exit F DISK and restart your machine by using the reset button or Ctrl+Alt+Del keys.

 

Step 4: Return to the A:> prompt, write F DISK/MBR and hit Enter. The screen will return A:> prompt. There will be no further message.

 

Step 5: These four previous steps were done to write a new Master Boot Record to your hard drive. If there were any hidden malicious programs i.e. virus, that will be overwritten.

 

Step 6: Restart your machine again.

 

Step 7: Get back to A:> and write F DISK and hit Enter. You can select FAT-32 if you have Windows 95B or higher, or Windows 98. Select option 1 to make a primary dos partition, then make extended partitions and drives.

 

Step 7: You have to exit F DISK and restart your machine.

 

Step 8: Get back to A:> prompt again and write FORMAT C: and hit Enter. Or if you like to make the disk bootable, you can use this command FORMAT C: /S to format and transfer the operating system.

 

Now, you can install your operating system normally.

 

Solution 2 (If you have Seagate HDD)

 

Step 1: Back up the drive on which you are going to operate low level format.

 

Step 2: Download Sea Tools from this.

 

Sea Tools will provide you the format options.

 

Step 3: Downloading Sea Tools for DOS will make a bootable CD or floppy. You can test your drive. Short test and Long test takes one minute and several hours simultaneously to complete. It will depend on the size of your drive. After the test, you should be ready to format your drive.

 

Step 4: You will be given these three options to format your drive by using Sea Tools:

 

Firstly, Erase Track ZERO provides you to delete the first 63 sectors, which will only take less than one minute to finish. If you apply this, the drive will seem to be empty when you load a new operating system.

 

Secondly, Timed Erase provides you to delete sectors which vary for not more than five minutes. It overwrites the sectors which were used to store static operating system files.

 

Thirdly, Full Erase deletes each and every sector on the drive you selected. The whole process reserves a long time span i.e. it takes several hours to finish. This is recommended by experts to reach your goal of low level format.

 

After you finish these four steps of Low Level Format, insert your operating system CD/DVD and restart your machine to follow your OS menu to partition and format.

 

Solution 3

 

You can use a few format tools which are now easily available for free in the websites. What you have to do is to download the tool and start using it.

 

I can recommend you a good format tool; HDD Low Level Format Tool which will help you reach your goal. Using this tool, you can get these facilities:

 

• It supports MS Windows 2000(Service Pack 4), 2003, XP.
• It supports manufacturers like Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital, IBM, Hitachi, Maxtor, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Quantum.
• It supports interfaces like IDE, SATA, USB, SCSI, FIREWIRE big drives (LBA-48).
• This tool supports even low level formatting of flash cards using a card reader.

You can delete your whole drive and the bad sectors will be fully removed. Here’s the link to download HDD Low Level Format Tool:

 

Download for Windows installer

 

About theleo

Questions
0

Answers
4

Best Answers
4

• Vote Up 0 Vote Down

• Posted on - 05/17/2011
• Question Category: Hard Drives

Answered By james071 0 points N/A #88564

Low level formatting needs to be done on 100’s of Hard disks

There are so many ways to perform low level formatting. But in this case, there are 100 hard disks to be formatted. There are many software available that will help you to do this task. We have to consider lots of things before we choose a software such as your OS (Operating system), whether your software supports hard disks interfaces (SATA, IDE..etc) and the manufacturers (Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi…etc ).

When we are going to connect an IDE hard disk to a computer, firstly, we have to turn off the computer and do that task. But you have 100 hard disks that need to be connected, so it would be a very difficult task. As a solution to that, I suggest you to use an IDE to USB adapter and use your hard disk as a flash drive. So, there is no need to shut down your compute anymore. If you use 10 computers and 10 adapters, it will help you to finish your task more easily. But you have to find a suitable software to perform the low level format.  

About james071

Questions
0

Answers
10

Best Answers
1

• Vote Up 0 Vote Down

• Posted on - 07/19/2011
• Question Category: Hard Drives