low-level formatter for linux

[stan]

On Tue, 4 Aug 2009 20:34:04 -0700
Markus Kesaromous <remotestar at live.com> wrote:

> 
> Sorry I did not clarify - By low level, I do  not mean Filesystem
> creation. I mean it the level at which bad-block forwarding takes
> place (i.e. all blocks are tested for sanity, and the bad blocks are
> forwarded to good blocks. This  in some cases may result in reduced
> total number of blocks, and thus might (emphasis on might) affect the
> disk geometry.

You could look at 
man badblocks
or 
man e2fsck

They will do read or read and write scan of the disk and mark failed
blocks as bad.  e2fsck is the better way.

Everyone else seems to think your drive is history, though, so maybe
this is wasted effort.