um a low level format is always the entire drive.  It basically returns
the drive to factory default.  AKA all 0's.  A high level format would
be what your talking about which would be the same as reformatting a
partition. as fdisk would do.

On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 08:42 -0700, maxim wexler wrote:
> Hello everbody,
> 
> Maxtor suggests I do a low-level format of my flaky
> Diamond 16 drive using their Powermax tool.
> Unfortunately it doesn't give you the option of
> sparing one partition or the other -- it does the
> whole thing.
> 
> I strongly suspect the problem lies on the first half
> of the drive where XP-pro used to reside. Is there a
> way to do a low-level format of part of a drive while
> leaving the rest intact?
> 
> -mw
> 
> 
> 		
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