fdformat (8) Linux Manual Page

fdformat – low-level format a floppy disk

Synopsis

fdformat [options] device

Description

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.

Options

-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.

See Also

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

Author

Werner Almesberger (almesber [at] nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch)

Availability

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