Low-level format?

[schmibble]

I've got a drive that's pretty much on its last legs; chkdsk is no longer solving the recurring HD problems, and HDDguardian is giving me four yellow danger alerts in its "Manage" tab. In the old days a low-level format could often give such drives a new lease on life, but my understanding is that a true low-level format is not possible with SATA, although the author of this article (snip) implies otherwise, and this free tool (snip) claims to perform one on today's drives. But other places say that today you can only zero-fill your drive, eg. (snip).

So who's correct?

I assume that the zero-fill folks are, because otherwise BIBM would offer the option to do low-level formats, which it doesn't.

That being the case, I assume that BIBM's option to fill drive with zeroes is the same thing as what is described at (snip) , and so (snip) just fills the drive with zeroes the same way BIBM can--so I don't need to bother with any other tool. Right?

However, if that is the case, does filling the drive with zeroes provide the same benefit as the old low-level format with regard to getting rid of bad logical sectors and shielding bad physical ones? Or do I just need to admit that the drive is beyond help and move on?

[TeraByte Support]

Don't bother, get a new drive and forget about the bad one, you'll just regret it later.

You'd have to ask what they mean by "low-level".

PS Removed links so not to promote it. Not sure what it actually is.

This is accurate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RldQVSXdW0Y

[schmibble]

Thanks for the youtube link. That does clarify things.