What solutions do Low-level formatting softwares provide?

Generally, low-level formatting softwares can provide following solutions for hard

disk repair:

1. Reset sector and rewrite verification value

This function is designed to correct some errors by resetting byte in each sector

and rewriting verification value to a defaulting one. For example, the ECC Error

could be fixed by applying this function.

2. Rewrite ID

Many early low-level formatting soft wares have this function, applied for

rewriting ID in each sector and reserving some info in some tracts. It is useful for

early hard disk to apply low-level format ting, but it could damage the present

hard disks when applying it.

3. Check writing and reading, and replace defective sector

This function is designed to check writing and reading status. In case that some

sectors are defective, they would be replaced and recovered.

4. Renumber all physical sector

This function is designed to reallocate ID in each sector and then hide bad

sectors in light of the P-list and parameters in sections

5. Modify pending parameters, such as status parameters

Some hard disks have the function to record low-level formatting parameters. In

case that the low-level formatting was complicated improperly, the hard disks

would reject writing and reading.

Review for some low-level formatting tools:

1) DM: when running the first and second functions, generally, it does not damage

hard disk, achieving high speed but not good recovery

2) Lformat: when running the first, second and third functions, it can recover some

parts of errors but achieves low speed.

3) SCSI Card: when running above functions, it can recover hard disk effectively.

Additional questions: What are distinctions between low-level and high-level

formatting? Should it be continued high-level formatting after low-level formatting?

Do both low-level and high-level formatting achieve anti-virus?

Disk formatting is the initial part of the process for preparing a hard disk or other

storage medium for its first use. And typically, for low-level formatting, it involves

subdividing each track on the disk into one or more blocks which would contain the

user data and associated control information, and repairing some logical bad sectors.

But there is possibility for low-level formatting to damage magnetic media, hence it

is not recommended to low-level format. And for high-level formatting, it is the

process of setting up an empty file system on the disk and installing a boot sector,

initializing FAT, and marking logical bad sectors. And OS usually has FORMAT grogram.

It is difficult to judge the advantages and disadvantages for low-level and high-level

formatting.

It was useful for low capacity of hard disk to low-level format, and many BIOS

provided such low-level formatting grogram. But it’s better to perform high-level

formatting for high capacity of hard disk, for when performing low-level formatting in

high capacity of hard disk, it could affect hard disk performance and reduce its

lifetime by charging its interleaving parameters. (It charges some physical hard disk

parameters)On the other hand, through it would damage the hard disk, yet it is also

useful to perform low-level formatting, especially to fix severe virus and logical

sectors. It’s recommended to perform low-level formatting program provided

specially by manufacturers, if necessary. However, it would take much time and

cause serious consequences, in case of incident power cut and computer crashing,

and etc.

Resource: http://www.salvationdata.com/blog/low-level-format/