What solutions do Low-level formatting softwares provide?

Oct. 19, 2010 - PRLog -- 1.   Reset sector and rewrite verification value
This function is designed to correct some errors by resetting byte in each sector and rewriting verification value to a defaulting one. For example, the ECC Error could be fixed by applying this function.

2.   Rewrite ID
Many early low-level formatting soft wares have this function, applied for rewriting ID in each sector and reserving some info in some tracts. It is useful for early hard disk to apply low-level format ting, but it could damage the present hard disks when applying it.

3.   Check writing and reading, and replace defective sector
This function is designed to check writing and reading status. In case that some sectors are defective, they would be replaced and recovered.

4.   Renumber all physical sector
This function is designed to reallocate ID in each sector and then hide bad sectors in light of the P-list and parameters in sections

5.   Modify pending parameters, such as status parameters
Some hard disks have the function to record low-level formatting parameters. In case that the low-level formatting was complicated improperly, the hard disks would reject writing and reading.

Review for some low-level formatting tools:
1)   DM: when running the first and second functions, generally, it does not damage hard disk, achieving high speed but not good recovery
2)   Lformat: when running the first, second and third functions, it can recover some parts of errors but achieves low speed.
3)   SCSI Card: when running above functions, it can recover hard disk effectively.

Additional questions: What are distinctions between low-level and high-level formatting? Should it be continued high-level formatting after low-level formatting?  Do both low-level and high-level formatting achieve anti-virus?

Disk formatting is the initial part of the process for preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for its first use. And typically, for low-level formatting, it involves subdividing each track on the disk into one or more blocks which would contain the user data and associated control information, and repairing some logical bad sectors. But there is possibility for low-level formatting to damage magnetic media, hence it is not recommended to low-level format. And for high-level formatting, it is the process of setting up an empty file system on the disk and installing a boot sector, initializing FAT, and marking logical bad sectors. And OS usually has FORMAT grogram.
It is difficult to judge the advantages and disadvantages for low-level and high-level formatting.

It was useful for low capacity of hard disk to low-level format, and many BIOS provided such low-level formatting grogram. But it’s better to perform high-level formatting for high capacity of hard disk, for when performing low-level formatting in high capacity of hard disk, it could affect hard disk performance and reduce its lifetime by charging its interleaving parameters. (It charges some physical hard disk parameters)On the other hand, through it would damage the hard disk, yet it is also useful to perform low-level formatting, especially to fix severe virus and logical sectors. It’s recommended to perform low-level formatting program provided specially by manufacturers, if necessary. However, it would take much time and cause serious consequences, in case of incident power cut and computer crashing, and etc.

Resource: http://www.salvationdata.com/blog/low-level-format/