how to reformat floppies that have data on them

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 19:29 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
> On Tuesday 10 April 2007 23:06, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> > Rick Stevens wrote:
> > > For an MS-DOS floppy,
> > >
> > >  #fdformat /dev/fd0H1440;mformat a:
> >
> > I don't think that udev creates anything but the /dev/fd0 for the
> > first floppy with the default settings...
> >
> > Mikkel
> 
> Ok. Udev doesn't come into my equation, as I'm doing this on FC2.
> 
> I've now got a floppy formatted with a low level format using the following.
> 
> [root at localhost djmons]# fdformat -n /dev/fd0H1440
> Double-sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
> Formatting ... done
> 
> So far so good, but I'm darned if I can get a filesystem on it using mformat, 
> and have tried allsorts of incantations. It would be nice if some of these 
> manpages had a simple example.

"mformat a:" should do it.  mtools use DOS- or Windows-like device
naming conventions, and "a:" is the floppy.

> At the moment I feel a bit like grandpa munster (the count) having mislayed 
> his book of spells, and trying to conjure something up by guesswork.
> 
> The floppy drive is almost new, and the floppy discs are Dyson MF2HD, 
> formatted for IBM, double sided, high density, and have hardly been used if 
> at all.
> 
> Mtools version on FC2 is 3.9.9
> 
> Anyone can help with the correct syntax for using mformat to add a filesystem 
> to this low level formatted floppy.

Again, "mformat a:".  Also try "man mtools" for further details.

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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   I haven't lost my mind.  It's backed up on tape somewhere, but   -
-                       probably not recoverable.                    -
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