Mark Lloyd writes:
On 04/22/2014 09:11 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

[snip]

Formatting (Low-Level): Creating sectors and sector metadata on
each track of each cylinder on the media
(usually done by the manufacturer, but can
also be done by end-user to change the sector
size to an unusual value (180 bytes, for
example for legacy system compatability,
or 4096 for big data performance)).

My first hard disk (30MB Seagate with separate {not IDE} RLL controller
card, in 1990) can with a low-level format program that had to be used
before doing anything else. This drive / controller was incompatible
with "386 protected mode".

Low-level formatting can NOT be done by the user on most (if not all)
modern hard drives. There are programs people SAY do that, but they
really just write data (0?) to existing sectors.


For SATA drives, it is more difficult. For SCSI drives, dead simple.

Note that the drive electronics are identical in both, just the controller
interface logic is different. Note also that the grade of drive matters,
a low-end consumer drive may not provide the capability to resector the drive.

I've reformatted both SCSI and SATA to different sector sizes, but in the SATA case used
a manufacturer provided utility not available to the general public to
generate 100 byte sectors for a legacy system.