I never thought there was any utility to do a low level format on IDE drives.

I know that in the old days there was on Utility on SCSI controllers specifically the ones I had from Adaptec that would allow you to Low Level Format SCSI Hard Drives.

Since that time there has been some controvery on the Subject of what truly is LOW LEVEL Formatting is.

I know that on the SCSI Controller cards Low LEvel formatting could VIrtually fix Drive Error found on the Drive to give you back a nice clean platter surface.

My question is this. Does the HDD Low level format Utility do a true low level format or it just writes 0's to the drive as Western Digital Diag. Floppy Utility does or the "dd /dev/zero command in Linux does?

Can anyone answer this question?

Thanks

The answer is Yes

There are many good Low level utilities for IDE .
Like Ontrack Disk managers

Ontrack Disk Manager demo here: http://www.ontrack.com/diskmanager/