What’s the actual meaning of low level formatting?

Low level formatting, so called physical format of hard disk, is a common treatment method for hard disk. Note that, the data will loss in full after low level formatting, and it is difficult to recover data from a formatted disk. So do not format you hard disk casually.

Why it is so difficult for data restoration from the formatted disk? What’s the actual meaning of low level formatting?

1 Resetting the section and rewriting checksum.

All the bytes will be set to zero in every section and meanwhile checksum of section will be reset to initial value after low level formatting, to correct some error causing by long use. For example, you can use low level formatting to repair checking error on disk.

2 Rewriting the identifying information.

The original low level formatting tool will rewrite the identifying information on every section and remain some track info while formatting the disk. But all these operations are aimed at old-fashioned disk, there is no need for the new one. It will cause damage, if we use the old tool on the latest disk, that’s why “low level formatting is dangerous”.

3 Check out sector reading or writing and replace the defect sectors.

The low level formatting tool will review every sector on the hard disk, and replace the defect sectors.

4 Renumber the whole physical sectors.

The low level formatting tool will assign parameters according to the record of P-list and sections, redistribute identifying info of physical section and hide the bad sector.

5 Renumber the track, and rewrite the related information.

The low level formatting tool will rewrite the servo information of every track and renumber it to prevent the hided bad track from user access.

6 Refusing operation of reading or writing.

Some disk have parameters for recording the low level formatting procedure, and it will refuse some reading or writing operation if the procedure was not finished correctly.

As the serious consequences, it is a dangerous thing of low level formatting. Except the professional, data recovery from the formatted disk is a tough task. There are some suggestions, according to the specialist in the team of Hdata Recovery Software:

1 Protecting is very important.

The success rate of data recovery depends on the intensity of damage, and no data recovery software can promise 100% data recovery. According to that, we should make data backup regularly or do some protections to the data, like avoiding of sudden cut in the using procedure or remaining the environment of data storage devices.

2 Solving the problem ASAP.

It is generally known that, we can retrieve the lost or damaged data, except the storage space they occupied has been written by the new data, so called overwritten. Once spotting data loss, the first thing you should do is stop using the computer, and search help from professional for data recovery.

3 Be careful about data recovery by yourself.

Some users would like to recover data by themselves, it will be OK if the data loss is a slight one. But a secondary damage of data may be aroused due to the false operation while data damaged badly.