Chaos Magnet

How to do a low-level format

I am now the proud user of a Windows 2000/Linux dual boot system. Not that it was easy, mind you. At one point my 160 Gig drive was reporting that it had two partitions: 82 Gig and 534 Gig. Obviously that was wrong. So Support told me I'd need to do a "low level format" but of course I had no idea how to do that.

So, they told me I needed to download a debug program. I did, then I used it to create a floppy that I could use to boot the machine. Just using fdisk (which was on the floppy, I guess) didn't work, so I had to run the following script:

A:\>debug <enter>
-F 200 L1000 0 <enter>
-A CS:100 <enter>
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 <enter>
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 <enter>
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 <enter>
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 <enter>
(80 for hd 0 or 81 for hd 1 )
xxxx:010C INT 13 <enter>
xxxx:010E INT 20 <enter>
xxxx:0110 <enter>
-g <enter>
Program terminated normally
-q<enter>

NOTE that I have no idea whether this script is particular to the Dell Precision 370 on which I was running it or whether that's the normal way to "overwrite the Master Boot Record with zeros", which is what support tells me that script does.

Definitely a "use at your own risk" kind of thing. Even if it works, the results are a completely blank hard drive. (Well, as far as the OS is concerned.)

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