bold text YA I WAS WOUNDERING IF I DID A LOW LEVEL FORMAT
CAN I PUT A FRESH COPY OF XP PRO FRESH INSTALL ON IT AND NOT HAVE ANY PROBLEMS DOING SO ?

These days LLF's are done at the factory and cannot be done by a user. For XP, you can use CDROM drive setup to delete any existing partitions before creating a new one to install XP on it.

http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/low-level-format.html

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_llfmt_what.html

Originally posted by Alec§taar:

Sort of, the Data Lifeguard tools can do a Zero Fill, quick or full to the drive, be it PATA or SATA. It can do a drive diagnostic as well. I guess it depends on what is considered a low level format