[quote user="foxyshadis"][quote user="Carnildo"][quote user="ShawnD"]
[quote user="Cap'n Steve"]I don't know much about hard drives, but isn't it impossible to destroy any decently modern one through software? Can the OS even see the low level stuff like track 0? If it overwrites other files however, that's still a pretty big WTF.[/quote]
There is nothing special about track 0. Actually the whole concept of tracks on hard drives is obsolete to the OS since the IDE standard can only access about 500MB useing track, head, sector notation. You need to use raw block numbers after that.
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In IDE drives, hardware track 0 (which is not the same as logical track 0) is where drive calibration information is stored, the idea being that the drive electronics can find that track on powerup without calibration, and then use that information to compensate for how the particular drive differs from the theoretical layout. If hardware track 0 gets overwritten (which shouldn't be possible, as the rest of the computer doesn't have access to it) the drive is hosed.
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I was pretty sure this is stored in ROM, or at least read-only flash memory, for many years now.
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I also thought that too... Factory set stuff in a ROM and things like bad sector map and SMART logs in flash or similar.