FDFORMAT(8)

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.

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

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

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