"David Chiu" <none@nowhere.org> wrote in message
news:a65p6v0fq@enews1.newsguy.com...
> I am not clear on what the HDTEST does when it is told to format an IDE
> drive, but people should keep in mind that earlier IDE drives may not like
> to be "formatted;" some older drives are reduced to a paper weight that
way.
> I think it is by far safer to wipe the partition tables and boot block.
>

I spent some more time fooling around with this. Those people who suggested
wiping the disk was better than low-level formatting are right, and I found
a simple utility to do it:

http://www.whitecanyon.com/cleandrivedemo.exe

This is an archive with two programs. The one called WipeDrv.exe is the one
you want. It completely removes the partition and boot info, but doesn't
wipe out the IDE info. It's a free demo that only wipes 25% of the drive,
but that's sufficient to allow the Vulcan software to partition the drive.
And it's faster than wiping the whole drive.
-Paul