Technics Player wrote:
"------just a normal dos format thus will not erase the partition table or restore a card formatted in the 7k back to 2GB, it will still be 1GB with the rest unusable."

That's strange because I've restored three 2GB cards to the full 2GB when they previously only allowed access to 1 GB. A normal dos format without the /X switch would not correct the problem.
Try it, you can't hurt anything and you might like it.

It does not work, I just formatted a 2GB card in the 7k and did a format f:/fs:fat /x, and it remained a newly formatted 1GB card with unallocated space.

Technics Player -- You are entirely correct. I find also that it does not work on cards with unallocated space.
My cards must have had other problems not related to the current thread.
Walt

that's ok I suspect to do it in cmd might require fdisk on a boot cd with a dos driver for whatever sd hardware etc.

Incidentally a jukebox format might be low level since a 2GB card in the panasonic reader takes ~5 minutes. The sd formatter program linked earlier only takes a couple of seconds in the same reader so probably only replaces the allocation table, but nevertheless will delete 7k partitions. As far as the ability to accept audio is concerned the result is identical.

I've found and just used a program which simply writes 'zeros' into each and every memory location on the card.
It's a dangerous program though because it lists all disks and partitions and all removable media on your system and you have to be very careful to select the correct one. When it is done it has wiped the card completely clean and ready for formatting. I think that is about as low level as you can get.
Walt

[This message has been edited by Walt M (edited 01-25-2008).]

if it's photorescue cardwiper (which does the same thing) I've used it for many years to test and unformat flash cards. However it was written a few years ago when cards were smaller and I have found the results unreliable with greater than 1GB cards, reporting errors randomly where there are none.

No, the program is KillDisk www.killdisk.com
The following is from their web site:
"Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. The most secure Gutmann's data destruction method is also implemented. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever."
There is a free suite and a professional version. The free version writes only zeros, which is totally adequate for our purposes. The Pro version is multi-pass with random character write for advanced security purposes.
I thought you might like to be aware of this program to add to your arsenal of utilities.
Walt




[This message has been edited by Walt M (edited 01-26-2008).]

I use eraser, which is freeware, for unrecoverable overwriting of hard drives, it also has the gutman option for 35 overwrites, plus the US DoD specs for 7 or 3 passes, and a random write option, but then MI6 are unlikely to want to recover my hard drives The advantage of cardwiper is that is gives read and write speed data for flash memory to confirm specs.