Ways to format an HDD

Ways to format an HDD I have an HDD [IDE connected through a USB case] with some damaged areas. Windows [Vista] format fails. I was given to understand that Low Level format is mostly for older drives and might not work on a newer one. And that there might be other techniques of wiping/formatting.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 306

Total answers/comments: 2

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Guest [Entry]

"Try using something like the GParted Live disk to format the hard drive. This way Windows cannot accidently interfere with the process.

If you are going to use it just on Windows, then you would want NTFS as the file system. Otherwise, go with FAT32. Although it does have a 4GB file size limit, it seems to be the most compatible file system out there."

Guest [Entry]

"You can use the dd command on Linux to perform low level wipe of the disk.

Just do dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda conv=noerror (Substitute sda with your disk id) to overwrite whole disk with zeros. This will wipe out everything, including partition table.

See http://en.wikipediadotorg/wiki/Dd_%28Unix%29 for more info on dd."