Quote from: f0dder on November 16, 2010, 12:59 PM

This is somewhat of a shock to me - first, because this means a format doesn't wipe your data. Second, because new bad sectors might not be discovered merely from a read, and sector reallocation only kicks in on a write. Eek.

Thanks for making me look into this, Joker - I'll be sure to do an explicit single-pass wipe instead of format from now on.

You could always try a Low Level Format, it worked on my 1TB Samsung - took a very long time, probably the same amount as doing a single-pass wipe.

* I personally prefer the phrase: "hit it on the head."  A fellow tech has coined the term skooge , which I also like. ("Better skooge that puppy first if you're gonna reuse it!")

Quote from: f0dder on November 16, 2010, 12:59 PM

This is somewhat of a shock to me - first, because this means a format doesn't wipe your data. Second, because new bad sectors might not be discovered merely from a read, and sector reallocation only kicks in on a write. Eek.

Thanks for making me look into this, Joker - I'll be sure to do an explicit single-pass wipe instead of format from now on.

You could always try a Low Level Format, it worked on my 1TB Samsung - took a very long time, probably the same amount as doing a single-pass wipe.

While it is impossible to perform an LLF on most modern hard drives (since the mid-1990s) outside the factory, the term "low-level format" is still being used (erroneously) for what should be called the reinitialization of a hard drive to its factory configuration (and even these terms may be misunderstood). Reinitialization should include identifying (and sparing out if possible) any sectors which cannot be written to and read back from the drive, correctly. The term has, however, been used by some to refer to only a portion of that process, in which every sector of the drive is written to; usually by writing a zero byte to every addressable location on the disk, sometimes called zero-filling.

So my terminology is wrong - so sue me