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Hello everyone helping me
Ok I have a old 286 and I need to format the drive. it has a 5 1/4 drive and I need a low level format boot disk that I can down load,put on a 3 1/2 disk and then put on the 5 1/4 disk and boot up the 286.
thanks for the help
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.
Do a search at: http://www.windrivers.com/company.htm
for your drive manufactures support page, If you do not find what you want, (Most manufactures do not supply MFM Low Level Formaters any more)
Try my Harddrive Preperation Page at PowerLoad Resource Pages for a utility called BCWipe which is a "Safe" Low Level File Wiper! Read the rest of the page re disk formatting. You should find what you want, and since most utilities a small, should have no problem fitting them onto a 5¼" or 3½" Floppy.Hope this helps.
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Open up the computer first. On that computer the HD may be MFM or RLL. Find model # of HD and controller card. The controller card may have a LLF on it's rom already.
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ok thanks guys
and I just wanted to let you know that there is no windows or dos. it gives me a bad or missing interpramater. when I start up so I thougt mabe there is a prob with dos and I need to format the drive.talked to some peeps about it and they said that I need to do a low level format because... when I get that error message I am stuck no prop or any thing. but I do have some old dos 3.10 or some thing like that and it will boot from them but when I tri to format or fdisk it can find c: drive and I cant install anything ether. so a tech said I need to low level format from a boot disk because the format tool on the dos disk cant find the drive...???? I dont know help.....
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ok the drive is a ST351S/X by seagate.
it is a RLL 2,7 (ZBR)..
and I cant find the controller card model #..
unless the hard drive # is the controller card #?????
hope this helps
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Would that be a st351A,X? That's a 40 meg IDE. I think it had jumpers to allow installation in XT class (8088) computers. If it's connected to a card with a bios then it's probably set for that configuration. I don't know if that would matter in a low level format.
Go to:http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/low_level_ata.html
for low level formatting info and downloads.
good luck
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ok been to that site already.. the prob is there is something wrong with the dos startup on the drive so the computor dosent give me a promp..I can boot from a floopy but when I tri to format with any porgram it cant find the hard drive. how can I fix this?
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You need a dos boot disk with fdisk and format on it. The computer should boot from the a: drive regardless of the condition of the hard drive. When it boots type fdisk at the a: prompt. If it says "error reading fixed disk" then it most likely need a low-level format. If it says "no fixed disk present" then your hard drive is bad. This assumes that the drive is properly set up in cmos and connected properly. Your 286 probably won't have user definable drive types. The correct settings for this drive are heads-6, cylinders-820, sectors-17. Scroll through the drive types until you find it. If you can't find that exact one then choose one with the same heads and sectors but fewer cylinders. Make sure the red striped edge of the ribbon cable is connected to the #1 pin side of the connector.
If the fdisk screen comes up OK then remove the existing partitons and repartiton it. Don't use a windows version of dos to do this. Use dos 6.22 if possible. If you don't have a full version of dos, I'm told you can download a system disk at www.bootdisk.com. You will need a full dos version to install completely.
If your 5 1/4" drive is your a: drive just switch the cables so that the 3 1/2" drive is at the end of the cable. If your cable has the 7 wire twist in it then that's all you need to do. If it doesn't then you'd have to change jumpers. In that case it would be better to get a new floppy cable because the jumper configuration of floppies is usually not obvious.
Good luck
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Also if you switch your floppies be sure to run setup and change the floppy configuration there.
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