Operating System: MS Windows 2000SP4/2003/XP

HDD Low Level Format Tool is a freeware utility for low-level hard disk drive formatting.


Supported interfaces: S-ATA (SATA), IDE (E-IDE), SCSI, USB, FIREWIRE. Big drives (LBA-48) are supported.

Supported Manufacturers: Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum, Western Digital.

The program also supports low-level formatting of FLASH cards using a card-reader.
This freeware Low Level Format utility will erase, Low-Level Format and re-certify a SATA, IDE or SCSI hard disk drive with any size of up to 281 474 976 710 655 bytes. Will work with USB and FIREWIRE external drive enclosures. Low-level formatting of Flash Cards is supported too. Low Level Format Tool will clear partitions, MBR, and every bit of user data. The data cannot be recovered after using this utility. The program utilizes Ultra-DMA transfers when possible.

WARNING: After running this free low level format tool, the whole disk surface will be fully erased.
Therefore, data restoration will be impossible after using this utility!

If normal (high level) hard disk formatting is required, you can use DOS FDISK command to first erase and create partitions and then use FORMAT. It is also a good idea when you hard disk becomes inaccessible to see if it is just the system files that are corrupted. Most of the time, it is the case. SYS will do the job of replacing system files. Therefore, low level format is always of LAST RESORT when you encounter HDD problems.

IBM(Hitachi)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Seagate
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

Maxtor
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

Fujitsu
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en&CID=1

Samsung
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/index.htm
FAQ: Low level format

Western Digital
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp