Problem downloading the program, and development idea

[wgjl0GWL0f]

2 questions:

1. Could someone please tell me how to download HDD Low Level Format Tool? The page where a link to it should be seems to be occupied by links to other software that my antivirus software does not approve of and which I do not want.

2. It is very boring when a low level format of a large drive is halted when it is near completion - for example, because of problem with the computer. It can take more than 48 hours to do a 2TB drive, having to resume from the beginning means that a long process is largely and needlessly duplicated. Could this software be developed to enable the formatting to be resumed? I seem to recall that it is possible in a hex editor to see where the formatting has been carried out, so if the formatting could be started at a particular point in the drive identified by a hex editor, perhaps the formatting of the drive could be completed from where it left off.

[HaQue]

well dont shoot me for quoting GRC, but:

https://www.grc.com/SR/FAQ.HTM

Can SpinRite low-level format my IDE, EIDE, or SCSI drive?

No software of any sort can truly low-level format today's modern drives. The ability to low-level format hard drives was lost back in the early 1990's when disc surfaces began incorporating factory written "embedded servo data".

and backed up by:

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/203931en

What does "low level format" a SATA or ATA (IDE) drive mean?

Actually 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 SATA and ATA (IDE) drives. The only safe method of initializing all the data on a Seagate device is the zero fill erase option in SeaTools for DOS. This is a simple process of writing all zeros (0's) to the entire hard disk drive.

So, stands to reason you could look at the disk in a Hex editor, then use dd on Linux to fill the rest with zeros, something like:

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

and Im sure dd would be able to start from somewhere aside from the beginning of the disk

[BlackST]

48 hours for a 2TB drive ? Your drive has problems and zerofilling it won't help. Depending on system it should not take more than few hours, same for internal SE.