From:	Hans Wienen <WienenH AT logica DOT com>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	low-level format of msdos partition needed?
Date:	Tue, 01 Jul 1997 13:40:37 -0700
Organization:	Logica BV
Lines:	23
Message-ID:	<33B96B45.48A9@logica.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host:	158.234.134.67
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

Hi,

I'm suffering the consequences of trying to convert a linux partition to
msdos. As msdos software packets tend to grow and grow, I decided to
dedicate another 500 Mb of my harddisk to Gates' products and gracefully
had cfdisk repartition my harddisk into two MSDOS volumes (of which one
already was DOS, so that nothing changed there), three linux partitions
and a linux swap partition. No problem there.

But.

When I tried to format the new msdos partition, the format programme
really screwed up, giving me about 700 k (!) instead of 500M, the rest
being "bad sectors". I suppose this is a low-level formatting problem,
since if I mount the partition under Linux, it can read it, write it and
basically do anything with it you would suspect an operating system ever
wanted to do with a hard disk. But dos still gives me about 500 M bad
sectors.

So,

Does anyone know if this is a low-level formatting problem, if a program
exists that could reformat my disk or if I'll have to give up?

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