How deep test and low level format a hard drive ?

I am looking for an program to deep test and low level format my hard disc.
Comparable to the manufacturer programs in the windows or dos world, like IBM Drive Fitness TEST.
1. I need an printed state conditioning diagnosis.
2. I want to relocate the blocks and masking the bad blocks.
3. data recovery nonrelevant
How are bad blocks treated in Apple Disc Utility.
Released FWB an hard disc toolkit version for mac os x?
How can i see all S.M.A.R.T. status informations in the terminal.(beyond the resume in Apple Disc Utility)

Your best bet is to copy anything that you want to save to another drive and then erase and format it MS-DOS FAT-32 for cross platform sharing or Guid / Mac OS Extended for Mac only use.

Similar Messages

Low level format external hard drive?

I have an external Hitachi hard drive that needs a low level format. Disk utility gives error message that it can't format the last section. I think there are locked flies on it from a short time it was attached to a PC. (The PC is dead now, but the external hard drive was still new when it died and had been working fine) Is there a program that will help me do this? I couldn't find one for the Mac on the web.
Thanks if anyone can help
21.5" iMac

Your best bet is to copy anything that you want to save to another drive and then erase and format it MS-DOS FAT-32 for cross platform sharing or Guid / Mac OS Extended for Mac only use.

Question about CHKDSK ,S.M.A.R.T and low level format

hi,
I like to know the difference exactly between CHKDSK and S.M.A.R.T and low level format program(I know that low level format writes zero"s) I mean besides the low level format writes zero's what onother
benefits it has , it repairs some bad sectors or mark bad sectors ect?
very short explanation wil be enough.
thanks
johan
h.david

H.david
1-CHKDSK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHKDSK CHKDSK verifies the
file system integrity on
hard disks or
floppy disk and fixes logical file system errors.
2-S.M.A.R.T http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. smart is a monitoring system for
computer
hard disk drives (HDDs) and
solid-state drives (SSDs)<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1">[1]</sup> to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures.
3-Low level formatting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_level_format
Wanikiya and Dyami--Team Zigzag

How to test the low level duration time ?

see attached vi, i want to test the low level duration time, how to do that ? thanks for help !
Attachments:
time test.vi ‏68 KB

Hi ateprojec…,
your vi is not executable for me! To measure the time you can use the "Tick Count (ms)" function.
[edit] ok, i think it´s not the time you want. Can you explain a little bit about what you mean? [/edit]
Hope it helps.
Mike
Message Edited by MikeS81 on 06-17-2008 09:13 AM
Attachments:
Unbenannt1.PNG ‏8 KB

HT201250 How to recover iPhoto Library after format of hard drive?

I've recently reinstalled Lion onto my hard drive but I forgot to backup my iPhoto library. Is there any way of recovering this library? I also have an external hard drive that had Time Machine Backups but that hard drive has since gone through formats as well. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you

SOLUTION : iPhoto folder recovered after formatting hard drive by mistake.
I was able for recover my iPhoto library ( intact ) after formatting the hard drive by mistake.
On top of that I formatted it in FAT32 format. My iPhoto folder was huge 100GB with file and movies of all sort of formats. I kept it on a secondary hard drive of 500 GB. one day I was formatting flash drive for somebody which was 500Mb, seems similar to my 500GB and I formatted my hard drive by mistake. I realized the mistake a week after the person called me and said there is nothing in flash disk and I find a single file on my hard drive. Needless to say the earth disappeared underneath me. All my pictures for 10 years , 8000 thousand of them, cherished memories all gone. But was I determined to find them back and I know they are intact somewhere. My biggest fear was that formatting on MS-dos format might have really deleted them , but they were there. and here is how I got them back.
First I tried the Data recuse 3 software. I got the photos back, but they were all jumbled up. Long numerical file names and original dates were gone. No way I could sort it out back to the way it was before . So my target was to recover the iPhoto folder intact.
- I bought an external hard drive with 1tb space to retrieve the data.
- The software which did the miraculous job is called " STELLAR PHOENIX MAC DATA RECOVERY" .
- I ran a deep scan all night and came up with many volumes. volume-1 was the MS dos , volume 2 was a mac system,
- I tried MS dos volume first and there was nothing on it.
- I tried the 2 volume with mac system. It got all my files and some other system file.
- I could see the iPhoto folder and click on that only to recover. After that I went for my doc and other files later.
- It took hours to retrieve my iPhoto folder intact, The folder size was right and file were there in master folder.
- I checked in FINDER , opening iPhoto with "show content " and all my picture file were there with original date.
- BUT when tried opening it in iPhoto , there was nothing. it keep showing the wait icon and nothing shows up. Empty iPhoto.
- I tired starting iPhoto , holding command -option and tried building and repairing database, nothing worked.
- Then I got this software " iPhoto library manager" .
- downloaded, installed it and pointed it towards my iPhoto folder.
- It asked for space to rebuild a new iPhoto library with existing picture and folder.
I had another external hard drive , I used it to make a rebuild iPhoto library.
and there I GOT IT. only took three night of pain.
IMPORTANT:
I never touched my original formatted hard drive. Don't write anything on it until you are sure you have recovered everything. open and see files with your own eyes.
- I recovered the iPhoto on another hard drive and then built it on another hard drive . Yes its pain in the neck but well worth fixing your stupid mistake of not making a back up in the first place.
I hope this helps all who are looking for iPhoto recovery and their lovely memories.

How to Install and boot-up New Blank Hard Drive

I am looking to install a new hard drive on my 2007 MBP C2D. I currently have a stock 200GB 5400rpm Toshiba hard drive installed and I am looking to upgrade. I was looking at a Seagate momentus 320GB 7200rpm SATA or a Western Digital 500GB 5400rpm SATA. Would I have any problems with either of these drives, and would I see significant improvement in performance if I went with the 7200rpm drive?
I was also looking to start fresh with the new drive, only copying and pasting some files from my old drive to the new one. I would do this by first copying the files I want from my old drive to an external, and then copy them to my new drive once it is installed. My questions are do I need to format the new drive? How do I install Leopard? Would I simply put the DVD into the disk drive and install it from there? I've read about partitioning issues and other installation problems; will I have to deal with these by installing it this way?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

All of my external hard drives are Western digital. I am pretty sure that they can only be formatted in FAT32, is that going to be a problem if I decide to clone my current hard drive?
FAT32 is not Mac OS X bootable. If you must have PC readable hard drive that is Mac bootable, get http://www.mediafour.com/macdrive
That will allow your PC to read your Mac drive.
If you want to setup a small network:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2959?viewlocale=en_US
You can still maintain the Mac booting by formatting your drive HFS+, and the PC will still be able to share files with your Mac.
Regardless you can't clone a Mac OS X bootable drive to a FAT32 formatted drive. And there is no such thing as a hard drive that can't be formatted HFS+. They may come initially formatted FAT32, but Apple's Disk Utility can reformat them.
I don't know what restrictions exist in event you run Boot Camp though. For that you'd have to ask in the Boot Camp forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1244
Would a 7200rpm drive show significant performance advantages over a 5400rpm drive?
If the drives are of equal capacity yes. Larger capacity but slower drives actually are the nearly the same speed as the faster drives of smaller capacity. I.e. a 120 GB 7200 RPM drive is going to be of equivalent speed to a 160 GB 5400 RPM drive.
Also, the one reason why I want to start fresh is because my computer sometimes runs slow, which it never did in the first few months that I had it.
The speed of the machine is not necessarily as dependent on capacity, as how full it is*:
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Thus as long as you don't approach the arbitrary 85% full point, and as long as all the software you are using has been tested with the currently installed operating system, and as long as your spotlight indexes are complete, and you aren't running any non-compatible optimization utilities, you should never have a slowdown. See my other FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html
to understand why a machine may slow down.
A 10 GB free hard drive sounds like it lacks the necessary empty capacity to run smoothly.
Cleaning the space as suggested earlier may be an easier approach than trying to install a new drive.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

How to launch factory image after format of hard drive

I have an HP TouchSmart600 PC that had a nasty rootkit. I've backed up the Factory Image partition, and then deleted all partitions and formatted the entire drive. I will restore the Factory Image partition from backup. NOW.... how do I access it and use it to restore the PC to it's factory state?

You don't really perform a HP Recovery in that manner. It is very unlikely to work as the system links pointing to the recovery partition will be missing. You should have created a set of HP Recovery Discs when you first setup your computer. Please locate the complete model and/or product of your computer and enter it HERE.
Frank
{------------ Please click the "White Kudos" Thumbs Up to say THANKS for helping.
Please click the "Accept As Solution" on my post, if my assistance has solved your issue. ------------V
This is a user supported forum. I am a volunteer and I don't work for HP.
HP 15t-j100 (on loan from HP)
HP 13 Split x2 (on loan from HP)
HP Slate8 Pro (on loan from HP)
HP a1632x - Windows 7, 4GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6450
HP p6130y - Windows 7, 8GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6450
HP p6320y - Windows 7, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GT 240
HP p7-1026 - Windows 7, 6GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6450
HP p6787c - Windows 7, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GT 240

How to partition and set up an external hard drive w/ bootable backup

I want to get organized with a couple of LaCie Ext. HDD I bought 1 TB each. I do a lot of photography and will be using Lightroom 3 quite a bit.
I also have Parallels 6 on My Macbook Pro Mid 2009 2.53 Mhz 250SSD with 4 GB of DRAM but upgrading soon to 8GB.
How should I partition my HDD's? The first LaCie I bought I already have Time machine on and started saving my pictures on. Also I backed up the Parallels info on it.
On the second LaCie should I just go with 1 partition? 2 Volumes? It is brand new.
In one volume I want to clone a Bootable back up file complete with Carbon Copy Cloner. So if my SSD on my lap top fails for any reason, I can just go out and buy a new one (Maybe larger SSD) and plug it in and copy the info from the new LaCie external HDD to the new internal SSD .
I am a bit new to this so be gentle.

Hi there.
OK - since you want to keep your optical drive (and remember that you can still keep the capacity to burn discs, the burner would just be external, but never mind...) then I would suggest you just install the OS on one of the external disks. You could partition it I suppose, but I don't think there is much reason to.
I guess there would be some simlicity to creating a 250gb partition on one of these disks that you create a bootable clone to, but my main reason for not doing this is that you're going to be wasting space. Thinking about it though if you have stuff on that SSD that you want to back up, and you're not just looking for a bootable OS on the disk you original partition idea would be better.
1. Use Disk Utility to format both 1TB drives for HFS+
2. pick the one that will be your bootable drive. Use Disk Utility to create a partition of the maximum size you think the boot drive will grow to (250 to be sure).
3. clone your SSD to that partition with CCC.
4. Put your work on that drive too.
5. Set up time machine to back up the work external drive to the blank external drive.
6. Set up CCC to make periodic differential backups of your ssd to the bootable partition.

How to reformat a mac os formatted external hard drive to ms dos fat

i partitioned a external hard drive so it could work as both my time machine back up and an external hard drive, i got another external hard drive as i was running out of space and wanted to use that one as a back up only, how do i reformat the partitioned one to MS-DOS (FAT)

Use Disk Utility in the Utilities folder: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1075

How to copy and replace new Mountain Lion hard drive with old Snow Leopard drive?

So far I have not found an answer to my question, so I am hoping that this is feasible.
A while ago I purchased a used 2010 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard that did not have the installer disc. A week ago the hardware died on me, so I replaced it with a new 2012 Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion.
The problem is that I purchased a 1 TB aftermarket HD for my old Macbook Pro and want to replace the current smaller hard drive in my new computer with it. I've already run Time Machine and put all of my data in my new computer so I figured that it would be possible to simply copy that disk image back over to my old drive and replace it. However the computer showed that they weren't compatible. When I tried to put my old hard drive in my new computer there was not a bootable OSX available.
Since Mountain Lion already came on my new computer I do not have an installer that I can use.
Is there anyway I can copy the current Mountain Lion information from my new hard drive and basically have a fully functioning, bootable copy on my old hard drive that I can put back into my new computer?
Thank you.

Well, if you put the HDD from the old Mac into an external enclosure you can use a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to clone the Mountain Lion installation onto the 1TB drive. If you go this route, I would suggest you consider using CCC as it does have the option to clone the Repair Partition as well as the boot volume.
Another route you could take would be to put the 1TB drive into the new MBP, and then boot to the Internet Recover . From there you can re-partition the drive and install Mountain Lion clean on the 1TB drive. During the installation process, you will have the option to use the Migration Assistant to migrate your data & apps. You can use your Time Machine backup for that, or if you have the original drive in an enclosure, you can migrate directly from the external drive. I have used this latter method myself a few times.

How to find and import prior bookmarks, after hard drive crashed and new program is installed?

After having a crash, my hard drive data was saved in a backup file but I need help in finding and bringing the saved bookmark file(s) into the newly installed program.

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
Your old Profile is located here in Win XP and W2K: <br />
''drive'':\Documents and Settings\''Windows login user name''\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\''profile_name''

Low level format

how can i low level format the hard drive from my satellite m108 laptop

"True" low level formatting went out years ago (except for some possible HDD factory processes), though there are plenty of shareware utilities still out there that use this term, but are really just performing disk wipes. Is this what are you attempting to do? You can do what's referred to as a Department of Defense (DOD) wipe (three 0/1 passes over every sector and track) with Symantec's GDISK utility or even use Microsoft's DISKPART to execute a similar type wipe.
Rick...

How to low-level format entire drive, including partition map?

Hi everyone,
I have an OWC-supplied, 80 GB, ATA hard drive (OWC Neptune), which originally shipped in an external, FireWire 400 case. The drive stopped working; disassembly of the case led to the discovery of a burned trace on the Oxford bridge. While the bare drive itself has no manufacturer name, its label style and model number listed on the drive clearly show it to be a Maxtor 6Y080L0, 80 GB.
Having removed the drive and installed it into a test Power Mac G4, the physical drive is recognized by Disk Utility (albeit with no partitions, mounted or otherwise). The drive emits "normal" power and spin-up sounds, with no clicking or other sounds that might normally indicate a failed drive. However, Disk Utility is unable to actually partition the drive—when attempted, the "Creating Partition" progress bar advances to about 1/8 of the way across, then moves no further (even if many hours are allowed to pass). Console reveals nothing as to what is stopping the format.
Moving further, I attempted to blow away the partition map with pdisk, but encountered several read errors in the partition map itself. I even went so far as to attempt to "build" a partition map, one partition at a time, based on the settings I found on an identical drive that is functioning properly. Although this seemed semi-successful, attempting to write the partition table again resulted in a couple of errors.
pdisk: Unable to write block 8 (Input/output error)
pdisk: Unable to write block 9 (Input/output error)
pdisk: Unable to write block 10 (Input/output error)
pdisk: Unable to write block 11 (Input/output error)
While it's entirely possible that the blown component on the FireWire bridge might have also taken out the drive, I'm not a big believer in coincidence and my thought is that the trace blew during an access of the partition map, corrupting it to the point that only a low-level format of that portion of the drive can potentially salvage it. There is no data on the hard drive I am worried about losing, but I'm not one to easily say "die" and so I'd like to be able to restore this drive to functionality, if at all possible.
So after setting the table for you here, my questions are as follows:
1. Is there any way to low-level format an entire drive that does not have a readable partition map? In essence, effectively returning the drive to something resembling an out-of-box, unformatted state? CLI is fine, and I'm even open to trying to throw the thing in a PC box, install Yellow Dog Linux so as to have GUI access to pdisk, etc.
2. Does anyone have any other suggestions for me regarding this matter?
Thanks much for the time,
MBJ

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I'm about to give up on it, although I will try the PowerMax software recommended by Michael Black.
And The hatter: Don't let this burn you on Neptune drives—one of my client offices has been using about 20 of them for the past couple of years now, on a daily basis, for large-scale imaging projects, and the little drives have been real champs. We're even using them to dual-boot both Intel- and PPC-based systems, and they've just been outstanding. Methinks the component failure probably cascaded down to the drive, and while yes, it *****, such things happen in any batch of components and I'd buy another Neptune today if I had the need for yet another external.
As for Matt Broughton: S.M.A.R.T. shows no problems when the drive is connected directly to the ATA bus. But then again, I've only run into a few drives that S.M.A.R.T. has ever reliably reported on—it's still a black art, to be sure. The WikiPedia article on S.M.A.R.T. goes into more detail about its pervasive flakiness.
For now, the drive has begun to beep about once every 2 seconds at boot. This lasts for about 30 seconds, after which the drive continues to spin but no further beeping is heard. The drive no longer shows up in Disk Utility, even as an unmounted drive/volume. So, I'll probably try it in a PC w/PowerMax just to say that I did, but beyond that, it's probably ready for disassembly as an example drive.
80 GB—sniffle…
Thanks again to all for your suggestions!
Take care,
MBJ

Disk Utility - Low Level Format??

Does anyone know which "Erase" option, if any, does a true low-level format of a hard drive? The kind which flags bad sectors and updates the drives bad sector table.
In the old days, before OS X, I used to use FWB "Hard Disk Toolkit" to format my drives to insure I didn't lose any data to new and unflagged bad sectors on a drive.
But Disk Utility doesn't seem to have an old-fashioned "format with verify" mode that will do what I want. At least not labeled in a manner which allows me to understand that it is going to do that.
Anyone have any inside knowledge on this subject?
Thanks in advance.

None. You cannot low-level format an ATA drive. Low-level formatting is for SCSI drives. What you can do is zero the data on an ATA drive which will mark bad sectors if there are any.
Do the following:
1. Boot from your Tiger DVD. After the installer loads select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. If this is an external drive then you can use Disk Utility from your Utilities folder rather than booting from the DVD.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.

R100 low level format utility

Hi all, I think I got a problem with my R100 hard drive. I cannot high level format by some reasons, bad sectors I guess. So, I'm trying to find a solution and I guess the low level format could be a solution for this. But, I couldn't find a utility for low level format. So, is there any utility I can do low level format R100 Hard?
Thanks in advance

Hi,
You don't wanna low-level format anything these days! All current hard drives won't even let you. I had a problem with bad sectors and metallic noises from my drive last month and I tried to fix it with utilities like "spinrite" and a myriad of other software without success. I used spinrite to rebuild the hd. It took three(!!!) days! The drive then worked for a couple of hours before it developed new read errors. This symptom means that there are un-recoverable errors on the drive and you want to buy a new one.
If you have warranty left, RMA it, otherwise go and buy a new drive. In Sweden the HD was incredibly expensive, about $400 (ridiculus, right!!). I had to buy this drive: http://www.sarotech.com/english/cgi/pd.cgi?cmd=view&rno=5
for $260 and grab the hd from the casing.
The Toshiba part# for the 40gb hd is: MK4004GAH
Search for it. Here's one link: http://www.span.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23_504&products_id=3149
Also, read some more about low-level formatting and try out spinrite here: www.spinrite.com

How deep test and low level format a hard drive ?

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