[Him]

Anyone know where I can get a good program to do a low level format on my external USB drive?

[Rouen]

You can do physical formatting with your Windows XP. However, it is generally NOT a good idea to do maintainence on a USB drive. It tends to screw up. I would just leave it alone. If the USB drive is already screwed as is.... you could try it. use the FORMAT command with XP command line.

[Him]

Yeah, it is screwed up. It's my last attempt to get it working before I return it.

I do know, however, that you cannot do a low level format within Windows.

[Him]

Alright, after doing some research into the subject, the end user cannot do a low level format. It is something that can only be done at the factory. But, you can zero fill a drve. Which wipes all the data, writing a zero to every sector of the drive. Making data recovery from the drive nearly, if not completely, impossible.

I have one utility I am using, from Seagate. It works, I've zeroed several drives with it. Using it on a 60 gb drive, it takes about 5 to 10 hours. Whatever, I do it while I sleep. So I have this external USB lacie hooked up, and I am currently doing a zero on it. Only problem is, after about 15 hours of running the utility I am only at 10%. It's a 160GB drive, so at this rate it will take 5 or 6 DAYS to complete!!! That is crap. Anyone know a utility that will do the same thing as this one, just not take nearly the amount of time?

I got mine at http://seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html