.\" Copyright 1992, 1993 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License
.TH FDFORMAT 8 "July 2014" "util-linux" "System Administration"
.SH NAME
fdformat \- low-level format a floppy disk
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B fdformat
.RI [options] " 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)
.PP
/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
.PP
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.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-from\fR \fIN\fR
Start at the track \fIN\fR (default is 0).
.TP
\fB\-t\fR, \fB\-\-to\fR \fIN\fR
Stop at the track \fIN\fR.
.TP
\fB\-r\fR, \fB\-\-repair\fR \fIN\fR
Try to repair tracks failed during the verification (max \fIN\fR retries).
.TP
\fB\-n\fR, \fB\-\-no\-verify\fR
Skip the verification that is normally performed after the formatting.
.TP
\fB\-V\fR, \fB\-\-version\fR
Display version information and exit.
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
Display help text and exit.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR fd (4),
.BR emkfs (8),
.BR mkfs (8),
.BR setfdprm (8)
.SH AUTHOR
Werner Almesberger (almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch)
.SH AVAILABILITY
The fdformat command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.