Low level formatting - [was Re: slow (s-l-o-w) install (TRY)]

[Alan Cox]

> Its BIOS has an option to low level format the IDE drive.  I tried it
> out on a knackered hard drive, and it did format that drive (in as much
> as data was erased, the drive was blanked). 

Generally IDE interprets a reformat as a zeroing of the media. The disk
itself controls the media so you can't really low level format it.