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Checked & Updated 1st June 2004

Hard Drive Preparation

Depending on your Computer BIOS limitations, you should be able to install a new Hard Drive of over 8.4GBs on most modern Pentium II or III and compatible Computers with no problems. But on older systems you may find limitations of partition size, added to this the older your Operating System the more problems you will encounter. No matter how modern your Motherboard and BIOS is, You will not break the 2.1GB limit of MS-DOS 6.22 or be able to use it with FAT32! Without the use of some kind of Disk Manager (And never on a FAT32 partition!)

Some System Limits you may encounter:

No Hard Disk Support at all with DOS 1.x (1980-1) (Hard Drives that did exist (appx 5MB) were expensive)

15MB Hard Disk Limit with MS-DOS 2.x (1983) (This is included to illustrate how far Disk sizes as come!)

32MB Hard Disk Limit on DOS versions upto MS-DOS 3.x ( >1988) (MS-DOS 4.0 introduces the 2.1GB DOS Limit)

528MB Hard Disk Limit on older 386/486/Pentium BIOS's (1990 >) (They just did not anticipate larger Hard Disks!)

2.1GB (Gigabytes) Limit with with MS-DOS upto 6.22 ( > 1994) (1GB = 1000 MBs)

4.2 or 8.4GB Barriers on some not so old BIOS's ( >1998) (10GB+ Drives are now common)

2 TB (Terabytes) Limit with FAT32 Drive Partitioning. (Thats 2,000 GBs)

Most major Hard Drive manufacturers supply a 'Disk Manager' or similar utility on floppy disk (or on a small partion to create a floppy disk if required - Always create such a disk) with new Hard Drives and/or provide one for download from the internet. It is recommend that you use the utility provided, rather than a 'Generic' Utility whenever possible.

'Generic' Disk Managers

Most 'Disk Managers' or 'Disk Wizards' are produced by Ontrack and customised for individual Manufacturers or Product Ranges. Most have a database of available Hard Drives, their access codes and perimeters, to make identifying a new drive easer and to limit errors. 'Generic' Disk Managers use a 'Best Guess' method!

Here is a 'Generic' Disk Manager available for download:
 STANDARD DISCLAIMER:
 You're on your own -- If you don't know what you're doing, then don't try it!

Disk Manager for DOS Version 5.22 by Ontrack (1993) ~ 210Kb Download

Includes 'Dynamic Disk Overlay' to break the 528MB Barrier on older drives, Supports IDE/EIDE & SCSI Drives as well as older ESDI, MFM and RLL drives with some limitaions. Designed for use upto MS-DOS 5.0, but will support MS-DOS 6x This version does not support FAT32 Partitions.

Disk Manager will not perform a Low-Level Intiatization on a Hard Drive unless you force it to do so with the /I switch (See Help.Bat for further details) This is because Modern Drives typically never need it! In fact, some IDE Drives can virtually destroy themselves if a Low-Level Initialisation is attempted.

The above program should be transfered to a bootable clean virus free floppy disk as soon as possible.

To find information or download utilities that are specific to your Make/Model of HardDrive (if available) try:

Some of the more popular manufactures:

Western Digital ~ http://support.wdc.com/

Maxtor ~ http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm

Seagate ~ http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

Quantum ~  Now supported by Maxtor.

IBM ~ http://www.storage.ibm.com/hddredirect.html?supcallbox

Low Level Formatting

What does "low level formatting" mean?

Actually the term "low level" is a bit of a misnomer. The low level process first used years ago in MFM hard drives bears little resemblance to what we now call a "low level format" for today's ATA (IDE) drives. A better name for today's low level formatting utility is intermediate- or mid-level formatting. This is sometimes referred to as the "initialize" or "re-initialize" process. The basic purpose of a mid-level format is to erase everything currently on the drive.

Why would I want to low level format my drive?

The most common reasons to low level format an ATA (IDE) hard drive are:

The drive has contracted a virus that cannot be removed without destroying the boot sector.
The drive is developing bad sectors at an increasing rate.
You are changing from one operating system to another and wish to remove everything from the drive.
You want to 100% destroy data on a hard drive before disposing of it.

The following utilities are stand-alone Low-Level Utilities (See Other Methods further down) :
 READ THE SMALL PRINT:
 You're on your own -- If you don't know what you're doing, then don't do it!
 Low Level Hard Disk Format and Surface Scan (LLFORMAT.EXE)  v1.3 by Western Digital (1987) ~ 8Kb Download

Low Level Format Utility (LF.EXE) v1.0 by QDI Software (1997) ~ 21Kb Download

BCWipe Is a Wipe Utility for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 (Freeware part of BestCrypt Data Protection System) Jetico, Inc., 1993-1999 ~ Which also contains a standalone utility called BCWipePD (20Kb Download) which shreds data according to U.S. Department of Defense recommendations to destroy data (DoD 5200.28-STD) : seven pass extended character rotation wiping.
Download BCWipePD (20Kb Download) and read text file for full extensive details on usage. (Recommended)

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Do not run a Low-Level Format Utility in Windows 3.x, Windows 95 or Windows NT. Do not interrupt low-level formatting by rebooting or by powering off  the system. Interruption of low-level format may result in an unusable drive

Caution: Low-Level formatting is not required on a new hard drive. Low-level formatting is typically used when the hard drive has some problems. Low-level formatting the hard drive may correct some errors. Serious disk errors may not be correctable. Low-Level formatting should be used as a last resort only. The time to low-level format a hard drive will vary by manufacturer and model. Larger drives may take over 1 hour to low-level format. All data will be lost on the hard drive after low-level format is completed.

Other Methods of Clearing Data, Viruses or Remarking Bad Sectors

FDISK and FORMAT are part of MS-DOS (And most other types) and should be used direct from a clean virus free bootable floppy disk, If you do not have one create one now..Or download one from the PowerLoad Bootdisk Project or Bootdisk.Com

FDISK/MBR

/MBR ~ Recreate Master Boot Record on disk 1
This function is handy when an virus has infected the Master Boot Record. ~ With /MBR you can wipe-out the virus.

FORMAT C: /C

/C ~ Causes FORMAT to retest bad clusters, otherwise FORMAT will mark the clusters as bad but will not retest them.

FORMAT C: /U   or   FORMAT C: /U/S

/U parameter performs an UNCONDITIONAL format, which DESTROYS every byte of data on a disk by overwriting it
with with blank spaces

/U/S adds the System Files on completion

Also See

FAT32, FDISK & FORMAT Guide ~ Notes on usage

FDISK Messages with Windows 98 ~ Messages you will see when using FDISK

Microsoft File Systems ~ The Differences Between FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS