1 .\" Copyright 1992, 1993 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
2 .\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License
3 .TH FDFORMAT 8 "July 2014" "util-linux" "System Administration"
5 fdformat \- low-level format a floppy disk
8 .RI [options] " device"
11 does a low-level format on a floppy disk.
13 is usually one of the following (for floppy devices the major = 2, and the
14 minor is shown for informational purposes only):
18 /dev/fd0d360 (minor = 4)
19 /dev/fd0h1200 (minor = 8)
20 /dev/fd0D360 (minor = 12)
21 /dev/fd0H360 (minor = 12)
22 /dev/fd0D720 (minor = 16)
23 /dev/fd0H720 (minor = 16)
24 /dev/fd0h360 (minor = 20)
25 /dev/fd0h720 (minor = 24)
26 /dev/fd0H1440 (minor = 28)
28 /dev/fd1d360 (minor = 5)
29 /dev/fd1h1200 (minor = 9)
30 /dev/fd1D360 (minor = 13)
31 /dev/fd1H360 (minor = 13)
32 /dev/fd1D720 (minor = 17)
33 /dev/fd1H720 (minor = 17)
34 /dev/fd1h360 (minor = 21)
35 /dev/fd1h720 (minor = 25)
36 /dev/fd1H1440 (minor = 29)
40 The generic floppy devices, /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1, will fail to work with
42 when a non-standard format is being used, or if the format has not been
43 autodetected earlier. In this case, use
45 to load the disk parameters.
48 \fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-from\fR \fIN\fR
49 Start at the track \fIN\fR (default is 0).
51 \fB\-t\fR, \fB\-\-to\fR \fIN\fR
52 Stop at the track \fIN\fR.
54 \fB\-r\fR, \fB\-\-repair\fR \fIN\fR
55 Try to repair tracks failed during the verification (max \fIN\fR retries).
57 \fB\-n\fR, \fB\-\-no\-verify\fR
58 Skip the verification that is normally performed after the formatting.
60 \fB\-V\fR, \fB\-\-version\fR
61 Display version information and exit.
63 \fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
64 Display help text and exit.
66 Werner Almesberger (almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch)
73 The fdformat command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
74 https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.