FDFORMAT(1) BSD General Commands Manual FDFORMAT(1)NAMEfdformat — format floppy disks
SYNOPSISfdformat [-F fill] [-f fmt] [-s fmtstr] [-nqvy] device
DESCRIPTION
The fdformat utility formats a floppy disk at device, where device may
either be given as a full path name of a device node for a floppy disk
drive (e.g. /dev/fd0), or using an abbreviated name that will be looked
up under /dev (e.g. “fd0”).
The options are as follows:
-F fill Use fill as the fill byte for newly formatted sectors. The
fill argument must be a number in the range 0 through 255
using common C language notation. The default value is
“0xf6”.
-f fmt Specify the density settings for a fmt kilobyte format, as
described in fdcontrol(8).
-s fmtstr Specify the density settings using explicit parameters, as
described in fdcontrol(8).
-n Do not verify floppy after formatting.
-q Suppress any normal output from the command, and do not ask
the user for a confirmation whether to format the floppy disk
at device.
-v Do not format, verify only.
-y Do not ask for confirmation whether to format the floppy disk
but still report formatting status.
For non-autoselecting subdevices, neither -f fmt nor -s fmtstr may be
specified, since the preconfigured media density settings from the kernel
driver will always be used. However, if device is a device with auto‐
matic media density selection (see fdc(4)), both methods can be used to
override the density settings for the newly formatted medium (without
permanently changing the density settings of device).
If the -q flag has not been specified, the user is asked for a confirma‐
tion of the intended formatting process. In order to continue, an answer
of ‘y’ must be given.
Note that fdformat does only perform low-level formatting. In order to
create a file system on the medium, see the commands newfs(8) for a UFS
file system, or newfs_msdos(8) for an MS-DOS (FAT) file system.
EXIT STATUS
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 an appro‐
priate information written to diagnostic output).
DIAGNOSTICS
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 is being formatted, then a ‘V’ while it is being
verified, and if an error has been detected, it will finally change to
‘E’. Detailed status information (cylinder, head and sector number, and
the exact cause of the error) will be printed for up to 10 errors after
the entire formatting process has completed.
SEE ALSOfdc(4), fdcontrol(8), newfs(8), newfs_msdos(8)HISTORY
The fdformat utility has been developed for 386BSD 0.1 and upgraded to
the new fdc(4) floppy disk driver. It later became part of the
FreeBSD 1.1 system. Starting with FreeBSD 5.0, it uses the unified den‐
sity specifications as described in fdcontrol(8).
AUTHORS
The program has been contributed by Jörg Wunsch, Dresden, with changes by
Serge Vakulenko and Andrey A. Chernov, Moscow.
BSD December 25, 2001 BSD
