Hi all
Yesterday I went to my aunt's home to repair her PC which is:
Win98se, 300MHz PII 128MB Ram

The problem was she was not able to log in to windows, when I checked it displayed an error:
Error Loading drive C:

I ran scandisk in dos mode then it dsplayed a lot of bad sectors.
Even the volume label was showing unrecognizable ASCII Characters.

Yet I continued to run scandisk may be it can repair the bad sectors but in each & every cluster there were 3 - 4 bad sectors.

So I decided to format the drive.
I Ran the format command but it said "Disk in the destination drive is full" thus terminating the format.

The same thing happened with the drive D:
I also tried other Partition utilities like DM (Disk Management - Seagate) & Ranish Partition manager but no luck.

Now I've decided to perform a Low level Format on the drive (though I know its dangerous, but what when the disk is already corrupt & non-functional) but the problem is I don't know how to do it.

Please help me solving the situation.
Thanks in advance for all the help.

Regards,
Naman

Naman Jandial
A-5 Sports Complex,
Delhi Road,
Meerut - 250002
INDIA
Website: http://www.newjandial.com

OS: Win98SE
CPU: Intel Celeron Compatible P4 1.70 GHz.
RAM: 128MB RAM
S

"Now I've decided to perform a Low level Format "

You can't, really - that's a very outdated term, and no longer applies

Likely writing zeroes is what you mean

If the drive is physically damaged, nothing's going to magically repair it - all you can do with software is repair 'logical errors' or else mark bad sectors so that they won't be used

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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Killdisk will 'zero fill' a drive - plenty of others

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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Before you do much else, ensure that all drives are set right in BIOS.

Then use fdisk to delete & recreate partitions.

As jboy says, LLF will almost surely wreck an IDE drive bigger than, let's say, 100MB.

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

And if a drive is "that" bad (3-4 bad sectors in every cluster), it's likely that even a LLF won't help for terribly long (even if you could do it). Spend a few bucks and get her a decent drive (though you might have trouble finding a new one under 40GB now---maybe not recognized by that old of a machine...)

Hi T-R-A,

I used to resurrect drives with SpinRite.

Now a drive is cheaper than the utility. In those days a 340MB was $500 LOL.

It's a funny world we live in.

Drives are too big.

CPUs are too fast.

And some boxes have more RAM than the OS can use.

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Also... a true LLF will wreck/render a curent drive unusable... The current LLF is probably more wisely referred to as an MLF (Mid Level Format), ; and as already indicated by others above, an MLF writes zeros to the drive.

If the drive is coughing up errors... save time/angst/frustration etc. and replace the drive. If the bios will not handle the smallest drive you can find... then install a Promise or similar controller-card. Will handle all curent drives; comes usually in pci format these days; costs arond $40? Easy to install etc. Gives you a current bios etc... I have an elderly Dell P2/233 and can handle a 40gig drive with the latest (it was the last) bios upgrade (dated late '90s...?).

Hi all
Thanks for all your help & got the point it won't help as I went at her place today & tried Mechanix suggestion.

The Drive is being detected in the BIOS.

Then I ran FDISK for deleting & recreating partitions & guess what the partitions were deleted but while creating them it continued to verify the drive integrity for about 15 minutes & atlast an error message appeared
"Track 0 Bad - Disk Unusable".

Any how it was a good experience to try & repair the bad sectors (which was an impossible task being "Track 0 Bad").

Thanks again for all your help.

Regards
Naman

Naman Jandial
A-5 Sports Complex,
Delhi Road,
Meerut - 250002
INDIA
Website: http://www.newjandial.com

OS: Win98SE
CPU: Intel Celeron Compatible P4 1.70 GHz.
RAM: 128MB RAM
S

Oddly... in some of the earlier books (by Minasi et alii) I think there was way to get around a duff/damaged track 0... But it was while ago and drives were much smaller - and a lot more money... A new drive would be a better option today?

Regarding #5
Mechanix you are right we are living ina funny world where the IT industry is proliferating like a virus but the components being used are getting cheaper.
Recently my friend purchased a new PC who already owns one with the following configuration:
Win98se, Celeron PII Compatible 400 MHz., 64 MB Ram 4GB HDD which costed him around
Rs. 50000 (US$ 1120 approx.)

He needed to upgrade his system in order to install a broadband connection & he straight away went for a new PC with this configuration:
Dual OS (WinXP + Win98se) P4 2.70 GHz., 256MB Ram 40GB HDD Which Costed him Rs. 21000
(US$ 470 approx.)

Just check out the big difference between the rising configuration & reduce in cost its not even 50%.

Let's see what will happen in the near future.

Regards
Naman

Naman Jandial
A-5 Sports Complex,
Delhi Road,
Meerut - 250002
INDIA
Website: http://www.newjandial.com

OS: Win98SE
CPU: Intel Celeron Compatible P4 1.70 GHz.
RAM: 128MB RAM
S

What is the model and/or size of the drive you're having problems with?

MAXLLF is a good LLF for drives up to 3 or 4 gig. A google search should turn up a download. Ontrack's DiskManager software usually had a zero fill as well as LLF. I uploaded one here:

http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=487789

Hi Naman,

I think your next move is the type of utility recommended by DAVEINCAPS.

I have a script which will wipe sectors via BIOS writes. It has a little more horsepower than fdisk/format but the drive maker's utility is usually best.

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

You said "I Ran the format command but it said "Disk in the destination drive is full" thus terminating the format.". From where did you run the format command?

Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!

Hi Jennifer,

Good point.

I assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that was caused by a scrambled FAT or partition table.

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

PCGuide

Hard drive manufacturers have created for modern drives replacements for the old LLF utilities. They cause some confusion, because they are often still called "low-level format" utilities. The name is incorrect because, again, no utility that a user can run on a PC can LLF a modern drive. A more proper name for this sort of program is a zero-fill and diagnostic utility.

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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Yeah, a true LLF is only done at the factory but either there's more than one 'level' to low level formatting or there's not a universal definition.

The DiskManager utilities had both a LLF and zero fill. I don't know what the difference between them was but I assume there was one.

A few times I've had a bios see a drive in the 1-3 gig range as 500 meg. It wasn't a bios limitation but some problem with the bios being able to see it as LBA. I'd run maxllf on the drive and choose to format it as LBA and after that the bios had no problem seeing it right. I've also used it to fix the fdisk message 'error reading fixed disk'.

The text file that accompanied the download stated 'This program will Low Level format the hard drive and restore the media to it's original factory format'. It's a 1996 file and was obviously designed by Maxtor for smaller drives. Although I've used it on many of the smaller IDE drives, maxllf did ruin a JTS Champ drive. So I'd recommend it only for smaller drives as a last-ditch effort after nothing else has worked. It's kind of a 'use at your own risk' situation.

I wouldn't expect any of these LLFs to work on larger drives. I know I've sometimes gotten a 'this drive doesn't support low level formatting' with DiskManager's LLF.

The chap at PCGuide.com does pretty well spell it out... avoid a true LLF at all times with anything other than a very elderly drive. How he manages to keep his site/info current us beyond me... his ist has been running quite a few years. I find it to be one of the most accurate/informative sites "out there" for all hardware issues. All credit to him.

Hi all
The disk is the Seagate made with 4GB space but I don't know the model number.

Jennifer Thanks to point that out

It may sound confusing but I tried formatting from three different sources.

1.) I enetred the Command prompt (tapping F8) & running the format on drive D: it said disk in the destination drive is full & format was terminated. also the volume label were showing some unrecognizable ASCII Characters.

2.) I tried it with my win98 startup disk & ran the format on both Drives C: & D: but still the same error message "Disk in the destination drive is full" format terminated.
also the volume label were showing some unrecognizable ASCII Characters.

3.) As no luck from the start up disk so I ran the DM & tried the format there still the same error message.

4.) I decided to delete the partitions I ran the FDISK from win98 startup disk. I deleted the partitions but was unable to create them it continued to check the integrity of the drive for more than 15 minutes. Actually it was again & again restarting. sometimes at 25% then at 50% then 75% then again at 25% it was never reaching 100%. it took me more than 45 minutes to watch all this happen.

5.) Fedup of all this I ran the DM again to recreate the partitions but the partitions were still there means they were not actually deleted. So I deleted them again & tried to recreate them from the DM. this time I made the partitions with FAT16 file system & gave the drive 500MB space still the same thing verification process being restarted.

Now what do you think is worth to repair it or get her a new one.

Regards,
Naman

Naman Jandial
A-5 Sports Complex,
Delhi Road,
Meerut - 250002
INDIA
Website: http://www.newjandial.com

OS: Win98SE
CPU: Intel Celeron Compatible P4 1.70 GHz.
RAM: 128MB RAM
S

You did run a zero fill or LLF, right?

Hi Dave
No I didn't ran the LLF or Zero fill on the drive as I already mentioned in my first post i do not how to do it

Regards
Naman

Naman Jandial
A-5 Sports Complex,
Delhi Road,
Meerut - 250002
INDIA
Website: http://www.newjandial.com

OS: Win98SE
CPU: Intel Celeron Compatible P4 1.70 GHz.
RAM: 128MB

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In #10 I gave a link to a diskmanager download and I mentioned a google search would turn up a download for maxllf. I can email it if you can't find it.

Since the drive is only a 4 gig I'd run maxllf on it.

Here's a site. The download contains the text file also.

LLFUTIL