FDFORMAT

Section: System Administration (8)
Updated: June 2020
Page Index

NAME

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.

NOTES

This utility does not handle USB floppy disk drives. Use ufiformat(8) instead.

AUTHORS

Werner Almesberger (almesber@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/.