FDFORMAT(1) BSD Reference Manual FDFORMAT(1)
fdformat - format floppy disks
fdformat [-q] [-n | -v] [-c cyls] [-s secs] [-h heads] [-r rate]
[-g gap3len] [-i intleave] [-S secshft] [-F fillbyte]
[-t steps_per_track] device_name
fdformat formats a floppy disk at device device_name. device_name should
be a character device; it may be given either with a full path name of a
raw device node for a floppy disk drive (e.g., /dev/rfd0c), or default
name in an abbreviated form, (e.g., fd0). Note that any geometry con-
straints of the device node (minor device number) are meaningless, since
they're overridden by fdformat.
The options are as follows:
-q Suppress any normal output from the command, and don't ask the
user for confirmation whether to format the floppy disk at
device_name.
-n Don't verify floppy after formatting.
-v Don't format; verify only.
-c cyls
-s secs
-h heads
-r rate
-g gap3len
-i intleave
-S secshft
-F fillbyte
-t steps_per_track
An alternate method to specify the geometry data to write to the
floppy disk.
If the -q flag has not been specified, the user is asked for confirmation
of the intended formatting process. In order to continue, an answer of
"y" must be given.
Unless -q has been specified, a single letter is printed to standard out-
put to inform the user about the progress of work. First, an "F" is
printed when the track(s) is being formatted, then a "V" while it's being
verified, and if an error has been detected, it will finally change to
"E".
An exit status of 0 is returned upon successful operation. Exit status 1
is returned on any errors during floppy formatting, and an exit status of
2 reflects invalid arguments given to the program (along with appropriate
information written to diagnostic output).
fdc(4)
fdformat was developed for 386BSD 0.1 and upgraded to the new fd(4) flop-
py disk driver. It later became part of FreeBSD 1.1, and was then ported
to OpenBSD 1.2.
The program was contributed by Joerg Wunsch, Dresden, with changes by
Serge Vakulenko and Andrew A. Chernov, Moscow.
MirOS BSD #10-current September 16, 1993 1
Generated on 2013-04-27 00:20:00 by $MirOS: src/scripts/roff2htm,v 1.77 2013/01/01 20:49:09 tg Exp $
These manual pages and other documentation are copyrighted by their respective writers;
their source is available at our CVSweb,
AnonCVS, and other mirrors. The rest is Copyright © 2002‒2013 The MirOS Project, Germany.
This product includes material
provided by Thorsten Glaser.
This manual page’s HTML representation is supposed to be valid XHTML/1.1; if not, please send a bug report – diffs preferred.