HDD Low Level Format is a free software tool ( for personal / home use only ) that allows the Low-Level Format (LLF) of hard disks (and mass storage devices in general).
What is LLF ?
"Typically this involved subdividing each track on the disk into one or more blocks which would contain the user data and associated control information. Different computers used different block sizes and IBM notably used variable block sizes but the popularity of the IBM PC caused the industry to adopt a standard of 512 user data bytes per block by the middle 1980s. " Source Wikipedia English
HDD- LLF has the following characteristics :
- Supported interfaces: S-ATA (SATA), IDE (E-IDE), SCSI, SAS, USB, FIREWIRE.
- Big drives (LBA-48) are supported.
- Supported Manufacturers: Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum, Western Digital, and almost any other not listed here.
- The program also supports low-level formatting of FLASH cards (SD, MMC, MemoryStick and CompactFlash) using a card-reader.
HDD- LLF can also work with external drives connected via USB, and Firewire as well as with supports SD , MMC, MemoryStick and CompactFlash .
There is also an option to quickly delete the partitions and the sector MBR (Master Boot Record) of HDDs .
The utility is available in two versions: can be installed on Windows or directly executed ( portable).
WARNING: After running this low level format tool, the whole disk surface will be erased.
Data restoration is impossible after using this utility!
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE :
I used HDD- LLF for low-level format an external drive connected with USB no longer wanted to learn to operate and above who do not " want to be" formatted by Windows. With both Windows XP and Seven, the format utility (which try to format only high-level) returned an error message and did not proceed . With HDD- LLF I managed to break the deadlock and then, through the utility of Windows XP " DISK MANAGEMENT " , I was able to format ( high-level) disk with the NTFS file system and now it works !
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
