pretty easy question

[Holmes, Steve]

I remember doing an fdformat first when I wrote to floppies but this brings
up an interesting question, When trying to create a slackware compatible
boot disk recently, I used fdformat, on /dev/fd0u1680 so I could get the
higher capacity;. I could read the files I wrote to it but I could never
boot with it. I wonder if this superformat gets around some of this somehow.
The bottom line here is when formatting floppies greater than 1440K, I could
not read them by subsequently mounting /dev/fd0 but only with /dev/fdu1680
or whatever the size. Upon booting however, I could not get the u1680 to
happen.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kirk Wood [mailto:cpt.kirk at 1tree.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 7:06 AM
To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: pretty easy question


On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Adam Myrow wrote:
> That won't work if the disk has never been formatted before.  If you have
> to format a floppy, first do "superformat /dev/fd0" as root, and to make
> it Linux native, do the "mke2fs /dev/fd0."  Otherwise, it will be for DOS
> or Windows.  Another note, if a user is in the group "floppy," they can
> format floppies without first having to "su" to root.

You do not have to use superformat first. This is an optional tool. You
can in fact simply run the command "mke2fs /dev/floppy". The tool
superformat gives you additional control features and will allow you to
fit more information into the disk. That being said, it is not going to be
found on every linux box around. It isn't on mine. Then again, it may have
been part of the default install. I simply don't know. I do know that I
just formatted a floppy and stored a file on it simply using the "mke2fs
/dev/fd0" command.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missle at
a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
	- President George Bush


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