fdformat - Man Page

fdformat [options] device

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.

-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.

-h,  --help

Display help text and exit.

-V,  --version

Print version and exit.

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

Werner Almesberger

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

For bug reports, use the issue tracker at https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.

The fdformat command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive.

ufiformat(8), usermount(1).