Low Level Format, a technique used by Hard Drive Manufacturer to recondition their HDD. There is myth saying LLF will bring old/damaged HDD back to life again but i can ensure you this is not true anymore for any new HDD.
Any HDD build nowadays (IDE/ATA/SATA/SCSI/SAS) have build in chipset protection that will ignore the LLF operation command sending out from the system. This is part of the safety measure of the HDD itself. The truth is, the LLF can now only be done in Factory with specific tool.
However, for those who concern about data security or wish to try their luck to read bad sector, there is a similar method like LLF for it.
We can zero-fill the HDD with a wipe Tool, the tool simply just write every sector with leading zero.
For this purpose, i would recommend Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool (also call Wipe Tool, both does same thing, just name different)
You can get this software at http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
For Vista/Windows 7 user: After install, the HDD Tool need to run with Administrator right. Right Click the shortcut –> Run as Administrators
————————————————————————————————
For people who want absolute safety on their data, they can use this tool to zap their current HDD before give/sell the HDD away.
The HDD Tool support USB/Firewire external Drive, It will recognized them and you can perform wiping on them later. (SMART function not fully supported)
Click Format This Device and the tool will run. The Process bar will take quite a long time (10% increment) so make sure you are on AC power and power option is set to Always On.
Once completed, you can call up Microsoft Disk Management Tool ( Run->diskmgmt.msc) and create a blank NTFS partition for the newly wipe HDD.
PS: The software doesn’t support wiping on a currently working OS Drive, the best method to get a External HDD enclosure and wipe it via USB/Firewire way.
HAPPY WIPING !!!
