fdformat

fdformat [options]device

fdformat does a low-level format on a floppy disk. device is usually one of the following (for floppy devices the major = 2, and the minor is shown for informational purposes only):

---

/dev/fd0d360 (minor = 4) /dev/fd0h1200 (minor = 8) /dev/fd0D360 (minor = 12) /dev/fd0H360 (minor = 12) /dev/fd0D720 (minor = 16) /dev/fd0H720 (minor = 16) /dev/fd0h360 (minor = 20) /dev/fd0h720 (minor = 24) /dev/fd0H1440 (minor = 28)

/dev/fd1d360 (minor = 5) /dev/fd1h1200 (minor = 9) /dev/fd1D360 (minor = 13) /dev/fd1H360 (minor = 13) /dev/fd1D720 (minor = 17) /dev/fd1H720 (minor = 17) /dev/fd1h360 (minor = 21) /dev/fd1h720 (minor = 25) /dev/fd1H1440 (minor = 29)

The generic floppy devices, /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1, will fail to work with fdformat when a non-standard format is being used, or if the format has not been autodetected earlier. In this case, use setfdprm(8) to load the disk parameters.

-f , --from N Start at the track N (default is 0).

-t , --to N Stop at the track N .

-r , --repair N Try to repair tracks failed during the verification (max N retries).

-n , --no -verify Skip the verification that is normally performed after the formatting.

-V , --version Display version information and exit.

-h , --help Display help text and exit.

The fdformat command is part of the util-linux package and is available from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

fd(4), emkfs(8), mkfs(8), setfdprm(8)

Werner Almesberger (almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch)