Android Low Level Format
Sandeep Albritton
HDD Low Level Format Tool is a tool for securely formatting and removing data from storage drives. When you delete a file from your computer, that file can easily be recovered, since it is not actually deleted from the memory. Instead, what Windows does is it allows the bits occupied by that file on your hard disk, SSD or USB stick to be overwritten.
Therefore, HDD Low Level Format Tool overwrites all the bits in a storage unit and assigns them a value of "00". This is very useful if you want to avoid leaving any trace of your personal information on a storage device. This is ideal when you want to, for example, sell a hard drive on a second-hand website, as it makes it impossible to recover the stored information.
It is important not to abuse this tool with SSD or USB flash drives, as it will generate a full write cycle of the drive size, and decrease its useful life. These drives have a limited number of write cycles, so be sure to use it only once. The performance of the program varies depending on the speed of your storage drive, working faster on an SSD and slower on a hard disk.
By opening HDD Low Level Format Tool, you can see the full list of your available storage drives. After choosing the one you want, click on "Next" and you will have three options: View device details, View S.M.A.R.T. data to view information such as the number of write cycles or hours of use, and the Low-level formatting option. When you select the "Format this device" option, you should be aware that any data stored on it will be erased forever, and cannot be recovered even with programs such as Recuva. When it reaches 100%, the process is complete.
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Therefore, HDD Low Level Format Tool overwrites all the bits in a storage unit and assigns them a value of \"00\". This is very useful if you want to avoid leaving any trace of your personal information on a storage device. This is ideal when you want to, for example, sell a hard drive on a second-hand website, as it makes it impossible to recover the stored information.
By opening HDD Low Level Format Tool, you can see the full list of your available storage drives. After choosing the one you want, click on \"Next\" and you will have three options: View device details, View S.M.A.R.T. data to view information such as the number of write cycles or hours of use, and the Low-level formatting option. When you select the \"Format this device\" option, you should be aware that any data stored on it will be erased forever, and cannot be recovered even with programs such as Recuva. When it reaches 100%, the process is complete.
Ok, so long story short, I have a box of floppies and a couple of them simply won't format anymore - not on my Windows 10 USB floppy nor on Windows 95 or 98. I've checked multiple physical drives and OSes. It's not a hardware issue. It's the floppy.
Does anyone have ready access to any software that might let me COMPLETELY low-level format a floppy to see if I can recover the physical disk for use? Like, the ability to write a brand new track 1 sector index marker, etc.
I am also not opposed to finding a really strong magnet to pass over the floppies to see if that will get them to format. Right now, the problem disks just keep getting kicked out as "failed to format floppy" within Windows 95/98. And Windows 10 doesn't even give me the option to low-level format - only quick format. I HAVE been unchecking that box in Win95, so that's not my issue.
EDIT: Nevermind - web searches are my friend. Looks like a Linux format program. The only Linux system I have running is my home media server and that computer doesn't have a floppy drive attached to it at all.
Nformat is the other one, both of them also have the ability to create "strange" formats like Microsoft DMF 21 sector, or to create optimized formats which skew on step so you don't lose a full rotation, typical optimized skew format is 3 for step and 0 or 1 on head switch
There's nothing better than "format a: /u" under DOS.
All you can do is to run format several times - sometimes the media is slightly dirty, and it cleans itself while revolving.
I've seen many times when the first run of format resulted in some bad sectors, the second in fewer bad sectors, and another in no bad sectors at all.
Nie tylko, jak widzicie, w tym trudność, że nie zdołacie wejść na moją grę, lecz i w tym, że ja do was cały zejść nie mogę, gdyż schodząc, gubię po drodze to, co miałem donieść.
So I've been experimenting with a card marked "CONNER 2MB FLOPPY CONTROLLER"...
I got it to read and write from/to a 1.44 MB floppy connected to that controller, but couldn't do format - "Track 0 bad" error every time, with every diskette.
I don't know wheter the controller is defective, or just lacks this functionality - I got it with a tape drive, and suspect it may be designed especially for tapes.
Nevermind it for now...
The important thing is: I ended up with a few "defective" diskettes...
After going back to a regular FDC, I tried to re-format them using normal DOS "format a: /u", but it ended up with some bad sectors.
Then I went to another PC, running Windows 95 OSR2 with BootGUI=0, and again did "format a: /u" - same amount of bytes in bad sectors, every time!
Couldn't believe they all got damaged...
Formatted once again, this time using DiskDupe...
...no bad sectors at all!
I had many disks that were like that and some others with bad sectors. I use Dave Dunnfield's ImageDisk under DOS and do a few rounds of the Erase Disk command, then go back to FORMAT /U /F:1.44 .. The disks come back to life, and even bad sectors get fixed after a few cycles of back-and-forth between Erase and Format (assuming no physical damage is on the media).
I also start my disk revival process with a media wipe using alcohol soaked microfiber, to rule out the effects of mold and dust on the media. Otherwise you might damage the drive if you keep feeding it dirty/moldy disks.
If the media is visibly damaged, the situation is clear.
If unusual noise can be heard - like repeated heads recalibration - then there must be something wrong with the media, but there's still some hope it's just dirty.
But if the media looks good, and sounds good, but FORMAT keeps ending up with bad sectors - the problem may be in the software...
Have you tried VGACOPY to format disks? It tries to relocate sectory physically within the track, so you may have success with floppys that show track 0 error.
Have you tried to format disks in a LS120 drive?
I had one or two DD disks back in the day that soft corrupted, I'd stick them in the Amiga, format to Amiga 880K, format back to PC 720k with crossdos on Amiga, then stick them back in the PC can format /U again in DOS and they'd be back to useable. Never had a HD Amiga drive to see if it worked with 1.44 too... but I've since used dd on linux systems for same effect.
I have had an occasion where one drive was misaligned and I got multiple bad floppies on it that actually ended up being a drive issue. One time I had a drive that actually damaged discs due to some caked up gunk on its head...
But as far as super low-level format goes, I use a neodymium magnet stolen from a HDD. It makes even some actually bad floppies work for the duration of getting DOS or windows to install (and then hours later they start begoming unreadable again ?)
A few months ago I realigned a floppy drive head by hand. Part of the testing procedure including a full disk write and read. This absolutely put data in all kinds of weird and wrong places on the disk. I can confirm that I had a lot of corruption after the fact, but the disks were recovered just fine with a reformat in another machine. I couldn't use the same drive to format it, because I wasn't sure whether the heads were aligned yet.
For the last couple of weeks the Paper app on Android has been acting up, I have several documents with formatting, mainly bullet list and pictures, when I tried to edit a document already in Paper I lose all of the formatting and even the pictures, I had to go to the desktop version an roll back to a previous version of the document, I can not edit or create new documents with formatting, my android version has been working good for years and all of the sudden I have this issue that is really inconvenient because I really need to use my phone or tablet to work on my documents, I'm not in front of my laptop all day.
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