Windows Low Level Format
Floriana Monterroza
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.
Note that a low-level format is a more thorough process than a regular format and may take significantly longer to complete. However, it should effectively reset the drive and allow you to access the full capacity again.
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A UPN can be implicitly or explicitly defined. An implicit UPN is of the form User...@DNSDomainName.com. An implicit UPN is always associated with the user's account, even if an explicit UPN is not defined. An explicit UPN is of the form Name@Suffix, where both the name and suffix strings are explicitly defined by the administrator.
The down-level logon name format is used to specify a domain and a user account in that domain, for example, DOMAIN\UserName. The following table summarizes the parts of a down-level logon name.
If there is a known malware / virus present on one's HDD, will a standard Format action render all threats inactive or does the affected HDD need to be completely wiped via a data destruction tool such a "dban" or other HDD cleaning tools?
I've been using "Gparted" to do a simple Format prior to routine cloning during the past couple of years and haven't encountered any issues after formatting an infected HDD and reusing it as a cloned spare verifiable working HDD.
I've read articles that go either way with this issue. One article said that a standard format will eliminate all malware / virus threats (not erasing all 1's / 0's but effectively cleaning the affected HDD of all threats so the HDD can be used as a safe backup HDD).
When I format prior to cloning, I select the default (not custom) format in "Gparted". I format the "System Reserved" partition and the main partition on my HDD. I don't do any custom resizing of partitions, etc.
One must typically use FDISK or some other similar utility to delete at least the boot partition where the MBR is located. The fact that the partition has been deleted now means it must be formatted in order to use it.
The normal method for most users is to boot from the Windows install CD/DVD and then when the drives are listed you choose the drive and delete the partitions. Then you create a partition and then click Install. There are certainly other tools, means, or operations if one understands and is capable of using other tools.
No. High-level formatting is just laying down a format scheme such as FAT, FAT32, NTFS, etc. and precludes partitioning. Partitioning is taking a volume and either having is as one large volume or break it down to two or more separate "partitions" which may be formatted using the same formatting scheme such as NTFS or two or more different schemes such as FAT32 and NTFS.
No. Low-level formatting is preparing the platters to accept a partition scheme and to map out bad sectors. It occurs at a lower level closer to the hardware. Simply wiping a drive by removing partitions, recreating partitions and reformatting a drive is done at OS level. Thus at a higher level.
I believe I can do that with "Gparted" but I haven't been deleting the actual partition. I'll look into that the next time I encounter an infection and remove the HDD to prepare it as a backup cloned spare.
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