.\" Copyright 1992, 1993 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License
.TH FDFORMAT 8 "1 February 1993" "Linux 0.99" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
fdformat \- Low-level formats a floppy disk
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B fdformat
.RB [ \-n ]
.I device
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B fdformat
does a low level format on a floppy disk.
.I device
is usually one of the following (for floppy devices, the major = 2, and the
minor is shown for informational purposes only):
.sp
.nf
.RS
/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)
.RE
.fi

The generic floppy devices, /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1, will fail to work with
.B fdformat
when a non-standard format is being used, or if the format has not been
autodetected earlier.  In this case, use
.BR setfdprm (8)
to load the disk parameters.

For ATAPI IDE floppy driver (also known as LS-120 drives or "Superdisk"
drives) you have to use the
.BR floppy (8).

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-n
No verify.  This option will disable the verification that is performed
after the format.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR fd (4),
.BR setfdprm (8),
.BR mkfs (8),
.BR emkfs (8),
.BR floppy (8)
.SH AUTHOR
Werner Almesberger (almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch)
.SH AVAILABILITY
The fdformat command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.
