On 06-Jul-05 Darren wrote:

Quick search of google http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/Format_Floppy.shtml

Regards Darren

That's a pretty poorly informative site! (And, for one thing, I don't have a program called "superformat" on my Red Hat 9 or SuSE machines).

Maybe the GNOME advice is adequate for Peter's need (since he's using Gnome), but when I look at the options on my RH9 Gnome "Floppy Formatter" I find it is a lot less than complete! (See below and compare with what "Floppy Formatter" offers you).

The following is a brief (and probably incomplete) survey of how to do it from the command line on any Linux system.

1. Make sure you have installed "mtools" if you're dealing with floppies to be used with DOS/Windows.

2. Brand-new floppies from the shop will be ready-formatted with (these days) a VFAT file system on them, so can be immediately used with DOS/Windows. If you want to put a different file-system on such a floppy, you will beed to raw-format it ("low level format").

3. To raw-format a floppy (e.g. if its formatting has been corrupted or you need to change the density or the filesystem) use the command (nothing to do with mtools) 'fdformat'. Put the floppy in the drive, and execute

fdformat /dev/fd****

where **** depends on which drive (fd0*** if you only have 1, fd1*** if you have 2 or more floppy drives and you put it in drive 2, etc.) you put it into, and on the density you want.

For a standard High Density 1.44MB floppy, the command would look like

fdformat /dev/fd0H1440

4. Floppy devices and densities: If you look at the output of

ls /dev/fd0*

you will see many different possible devices for "floppy 1":

/dev/fd0 /dev/fd0h1476 /dev/fd0H720 /dev/fd0u1743 /dev/fd0u3840 /dev/fd0CompaQ /dev/fd0h1494 /dev/fd0h880 /dev/fd0u1760 /dev/fd0u720 /dev/fd0d360 /dev/fd0h1660 /dev/fd0u1040 /dev/fd0u1840 /dev/fd0u800 /dev/fd0D360 /dev/fd0h360 /dev/fd0u1120 /dev/fd0u1920 /dev/fd0u820 /dev/fd0D720 /dev/fd0H360 /dev/fd0u1440 /dev/fd0u2880 /dev/fd0u830 /dev/fd0h1200 /dev/fd0h410 /dev/fd0u1660 /dev/fd0u3200 /dev/fd0h1440 /dev/fd0h420 /dev/fd0u1680 /dev/fd0u3520 /dev/fd0H1440 /dev/fd0h720 /dev/fd0u1722 /dev/fd0u360

"/dev/fd0" is the generic floppy 1 device and corresponds to the floppy drive you put the disk into.

For the others, the digits at the end give the number of bytes on the floppy disk, and the letter preceding it denotes the density.

Thus "fd0H1440" denotes a High Density floppy formatted with 1440 KB on it. A listing of what the others correspond to can be found by looking at the output of

man fd

examples of this being:

3.5 inch double density device files: Name Capac. Cyl. Sect. Heads Base minor # ---------------------------------------------------------- fdnD1120 1120K 80 14 2 88

3.5 inch high density device files: Name Capac. Cyl. Sect. Heads Base minor # ---------------------------------------------------------- fdnH1440 1440K 80 18 2 28 fdnH1760 1760K 80 22 2 96

3.5 inch extra density device files: Name Capac. Cyl. Sect. Heads Base minor # ---------------------------------------------------------- fdnE2880 2880K 80 36 2 32 fdnCompaQ 2880K 80 36 2 36 fdnE3840 3840K 80 48 2 112

where the "n" denotes 0, 1, ... according to whether you use drive 1, 2, ... for the formatting.

5. You can usually put more than 1.4MB on a standard HD floppy; for instance, I've used /dev/fd0H1760 to get 1.76MB onto one.

This was needed to get "tomsrtbt" Linux onto a single floppy. See:

http://www.toms.net/rb/

This is a complete Linux system on a single floppy, and can be very useful for working on broken PC file-systems whether Linux or Windows: just boot from the floppy, and you have programs like 'fdisk' for mending filesystems or partition tables, 'vi' for editing text files (like system config files), and all sorts of other things (you can also network with PLIP and SLIP), etc. It's a brilliant piece of packing, and highly recommended to have by you in case of emergency!

6. After raw-formatting, you can put DOS/Win type filesystems on the floppy with 'mformat' from mtools. To see what's available see the output from

man mformat

7. You can put Linux-type filesystems on with one of the variants of 'mkfs'; to see what's possible, do

man mkfs

and see especially the "SEE ALSO" section. E.g. to put an ext2 filesystem on the (previously raw-formatted) disk in floppy drive 1, you can do

mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0

(since the floppy is now formatted, the system can access it as the generic floppy 1 device).

Hoping this is useful, andf not overkill! Ted.

Peter Hunter wrote:

...

I know this is a stupid question, but how do I format a floppy? I.m using Gnome in Suse 9.3 Prof. I've looked in all the system stuff and Yast etc., but can't find any way of doing this. I know it must be really simple, and I'm going to feel a right twit afterwards, but please. someone put me out of my missery.

Peter

-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 06-Jul-05 Time: 13:16:56 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

On Wednesday 06 July 2005 12:13, Brett Parker wrote:

If it kills your {cat,dog,goldfish,grand mother,budgie,toaster,hair}

You heartless and insensitive swine - You knew the cat died last night after trying to catch the goldfish... And the less said about hair, the better. ;-/

Regards, Paul.