fdformat — Low-level formats a floppy disk
fdformat [−n] 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.