Low level format change

[berniechilds]

I need to reformat a HDD that has 528 bytes/sector to 512 Bytes/ sector - any ideas

 

[lonewolf7]

You cant change the sectors of a HDD. No way. You can change the "Allocation unit size" on Disk management but not the sectors of HDD.

 

[berniechilds]

You cant change the sectors of a HDD. No way. You can change the "Allocation unit size" on Disk management but not the sectors of HDD.

The problem is that Windows management console can see the drive but cannot intialise it therfore you can't change the "allocation unit size" and format it

 

[lonewolf7]

So what is the exact problem ? Please explain, we will try to help you.

 

[berniechilds]

So what is the exact problem ? Please explain, we will try to help you.

We have some 300GB 15K SAS drives that came from a IBM Disk array and want to sell them on. They are fortmatted with 528 bytes/sector, we no longer have access the to array manager to change the low level format to 512 bytes/ sector and whilst the drive can seen through the Windows management console it cannot be intialised - it errors with I/O error which we assume is because the standard drive controller cannot access the drive correctly because of the 528 byes/ sector and therefore we are unable to reformat them to 512 bytes /sector.