knotts@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com (Tom Knotts) (01/23/91)
>IDE drives (typically) come pre-low-level-formatted from the factory >and, therefore, only require partitioning and high-level formatting. >However, a (very small) few from certain manufacturers may have not >been low-leveled or may have lost format due to magnetic fields in >shipment. There is *no* danger in low-level formatting these drives >provided you do it correctly. There are versions of Disk Manager for >IDE drives which work very well. Just be sure the correct parameters >(and, optionally, sector translation scheme) are used and all will be >well. Yes, I re-formatted my IDE drive with software from Maxtor. In the configuration menu, I was able to choose the specific drive that I had. This is a real confidence booster. On the down side, they stuck me for $50 for the software. They told me that a lot of people make the same mistake that I made, and they are in the process of adding a big warning label on the drive stating not to perform a low-level format. Besides mag. fields in transit, it can be necessary to re-format a drive that was corrupted by a virus. tom