>but it did take a long time to low level 40 gb. very long in fact. >kenta
Well, all I could think of is this: maybe drive setup is testing the drive (same as would happen when you choose "test drive" from the menu). It's looking for bad blocks. Perhaps you're lucky and it has never found any, so it hasn't tried to actually change the physical sectors. Or, maybe it does find bad blocks, tries to map them out, fails, doesn't trow up an error message, and continues to the next task. I don't know why it does this. All I know is that you've gotten lucky and haven't toasted your hard drive yet. I don't know the inner workings of Drive Setup, so it may actually be testing your hard drive, but not actually finishing the LLF. All I know is that if it does manage to map out bad blocks or change the physical setup of the hard disk, then your disk is toast. IDE hard drives, as I've mentioned before, cannot handle it when a 3rd party tool screws with it's physical formatting. (Some OEMs have tools to do this - Maxtor, for instance, has a PC tool which _does_ LLF a Maxtor hard drive. They can do this because they know how their hard drives work. Apple cannot do this.) >but the lowlevelformat filesystem is the same ?? >k In a manner of speaking, but it's not a file system. And it's not the same across all hard drives. That's why most disk utilities screw the pooch when they try to LLF an IDE hard drive. Hard drives have certain sections reserved for specific data (where to find data on the hard drive, how many files are on the hard drive, where to find the system files on the hard drive in order to boot up, where to find 'drivers' for the hard drive itself, how many partitions there are on the hard drive and what logical format they are, and information about the physical structure of the hard drive, among other things). This information is not uniform across all hard drives and operating systems, but it generally fits a model like I've just described. Loving our 40+" of snow, Drew -- Author of ClassicStumbler email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> web: <http://homepage.mac.com/alk/> Want to know if your neighbor has Wi-Fi? Find out with ClassicStumbler! <http://homepage.mac.com/alk/classicstumbler.html> -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
