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HDD Low Level Format
The Low Level Format utility is designed as a tool to save you time
formatting your hard disk. It automatically looks for the necessary infor-
mation of the drive you selected. This utility also searches for bad
tracks and lists them for your reference. Highlight this option and press
<Enter>. A screen similar to the one on the next page will appear.
Large Mode
Large mode is the extended HDD access mode supported by the sys-
tem board. Some IDE HDDs have more than 1024 cylinders without
LBA support (in some cases, you may not want the LBA mode). This
system board provides another alternative to support these kinds of
HDDs.
The BIOS tells the operating system that the number of cylinders is half
the actual number and that the number of heads is double the actual
number. During disk access, the reverse conversion is done by the
INT13h routine.
Maximum HDD size:
no. Cylinders
(1024)
x no. Heads
( 32)
x no. Sectors
( 63)
x bytes per sector
( 512)
1 gigabyte
Note:
To support LBA or Large mode, address translation software is included
in the Award BIOS HDD Sevice Routine (INT13h). If you are running an
operating system that bypasses the BIOS Int13 Service Routine, LBA
and Large Mode may fail.
