reformatting a HD
I'm using Disk Setup. I want to do a low level format, but this option is grayed out for me. Why is it like this? Do I have to do something special to allow this option to become available?
I suspect there is a bad block where the volume information is kept, but doing a regular surface scan will only reveal bad blocks in the "user" area of the HD. I read that doing a low level format would apply this test for the whole disk, hopefully circumventing the scenario where the volume information gets intentionally written in a space that contains a bad block (yielding an ineffectual disk initialization).
I suspect there is a bad block where the volume information is kept, but doing a regular surface scan will only reveal bad blocks in the "user" area of the HD. I read that doing a low level format would apply this test for the whole disk, hopefully circumventing the scenario where the volume information gets intentionally written in a space that contains a bad block (yielding an ineffectual disk initialization).
Comments
10.2 Startup Disc?
If only I had a PC (never thought I'd be saying that)... You could do low-level formats from the BIOS or DOS shell, no?
Drive Setup won't let you bake the drive you're currently booting from
got access to Diskwarrior? (both diagnosis of bad sector, and fix-it tools while booted from CD)
I will check out the DiskWarrior thing, though. Thanks.