Is it okay...

If you were trying to force format a hhd, then i would have to say that the hhd must have bad sectors on it, and if that were the case...then no i would say that it would not be a good idea. you can make it so that the format just uses the portion of the hhd that is good.

if the hhd is just going to be used for storage .. pics / music/ ..ect then it would be ok, but i would'nt put a OS on it and rely on it's ability to stay stable.
 
I had bad sectors, but I forced to format over it too. The last drive I did t though, it destroyed itself. Well, if you force format, hence a low-formatting, is it to completely destroy the files or because your drive really contains bad sectors?
 
Read above... it is a completely new external harddrive. And it's too late... I already started formatting it. But please, give me your tips.
 
Not sure, but after you do the low-level format, you might have to repartition and reformat the drive with the new FAT table. Don't mark my words though, couldn't find a description to support that argument.
 
G9 said:
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what that means... :p

What that means, and again I am not sure if it still does this, but when you do a low-level format, it rewrites your hard drive with zeros to completely erase all data on it. But sometimes you will need to repartition and reformat your drive, after performing the low-level format. To do this, boot into DOS with a Windows 98 SE OEM boot disk (see http://www.bootdisk.com for a download to create your own 98 SE boot disk). Once you have booted into DOS, type FDISK and press enter. From there, go about the order of deleting any existing partitions (shouldn't be any with a low-level format). Make sure to delete in this order: logical, extended, primary. After you have an empty FAT table (press 4 at the main menu to see the FAT table), go to option 1 twice consecutively to create a primary DOS partition. Then after the counter reaches 100%, say Yes to use entire drive for one partition. Once this is done, you can format and convert to NTFS if desired. This should take care of all your worries.
 
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