I have tried the killhdd.bat file with debug.exe. It doesn't work, what could I be doing wrong. I have a DOS 6.22 version, as well as WIN95 and Win98 1st edition. I would dearly like to utilise this utility, can some send me the answer by e-mail please. Any other low level formatting utility is also welcome, as long as I can get rid of bad sectors and partition errors its fine. Thanks.

Have you looked in the bios some have a low levelformat utility there.BTW why do you wish to usethis utility will a normal format not do the job?

Hi Fred. Not sure about the debug/killhd stuff at all..... To start from scratch and get your HD in good shape, first run fdisk to partition it. Then use the format command to format it. If you want to lock out bad sectors use chkdsk /f which will fix bad sectors. All these commands are part of dos 6.22

Getting hold of the drive manufactures disk management tools might help you. I've managed to recover a number of so called u/s hard drives using them.

Responing to Thx1138 I have a mother board with such a bios, however it seems that the motherboard is one of the older types and cannot read larger capacity drives. A normal format once again registers the bad clusters. Responding to Chris fdisk, format and chkdsk just aren't up to it I'm afraid, I have tried but to no avail, took me ages, with the bios utility, and then fdisk and formatting the drive etc. Responding to Mark p I have downloaded Seagate's as well as Western Digital's utilities. I have found that Seagate's is the better one, only problem is one has to have a Seagate drive attached if you wish to low-level format any other make. The reason why I'm asking is that I'm building computers in my spare time, and down in good ol' South Africa we currently pay dearly for hdd's, even for the 1 - 2 Gb hdd's. These small drives are hard to come by, even with bad clusters. I'd like to recover as many as I possibly can. What would happen if one were to change the hdd control boards? The guys at the manufacturers remain mum - say it's classified. Any one out there willing to share some more info. Thanks.

qdigrp.com has a low level format utility don't think it's drive or board specific

Insert a boot diskette that contains the Debug.exe command into the respective drive. Restart the computer. A black screen with Microsoft Windows® 95 Startup Menu will appear. Press the key on the keyboard followed by the key. The boot process will conclude with an A:\> prompt, followed by a blinking underline (cursor). From the A:\> prompt, type the following commands and press the key after each command: NOTICE: Performing the following will remove all data from your hard disk drive. NOTE: Type the bolded text only (the debug prompt is a dash). You will receive an error if you type anything other than the bold text. The non-bolded text represents the system response that will appear after typing each command and press the key. debug -F 200 L1000 0 -A CS:100 xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 NOTE: Type 80 for the Main hard drive - HD 0, or type 81 for the Second hard drive - HD 1 xxxx:010C INT 13 xxxx:010E INT 20 xxxx:0110 (Leave this line blank and press the key) -G The message, Program terminated normally, appears. Turn off the computer by pressing the power button. On the next startup the hard drive must be partitioned and formatted.