Formatting floppies under Linux

Support knowledgebase (maddin_disk_format)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: All versions

Floppies are formatted under Linux in 2 steps:

Low level format

The first step deals with the programme fdformat. It takes a parameter, the floppy disk drive's device name. The floppy's format is set to this name.

That is why it does not work if /dev/fd0 or /dev/fd1 are declared as parameter: with these device names kernel tries to find out, which disk format is available (but it cannot before formatting !). To format e.g. a floppy with 1.44 MByte in the (DOS) drive A , it must be entered the following:

fdformat /dev/fd0u1440 
Afterwards one has a floppy with 2 Sides, 80 cylinders and 18 sectors formatted per track. Careful; at this point there are only sectors, not any file system yet.

High level format

The file system gets opened in the second step. Here it should be exemplarly presented the procedure for 2 file system kinds:

Important hint:

As in other operating systems, all data gets lost in Linux when formatting on the data carrier!


Keywords: DISKS, FORMAT, MSDOS, DOS, FILE SYSTEM, MINIX

SDB-maddin_disk_format, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 27. Jul 1996
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 07. Mai 2002 by sdb (sdb_gen 1.40.0)