NAME¶
hformat - create a new HFS filesystem and make it current
SYNOPSIS¶
hformat [-f] [-l
label]
destination-path [
partition-no]
DESCRIPTION¶
hformat is used to write a new HFS filesystem to a volume. A UNIX
pathname to the volume's destination must be specified. The destination may be
either a block device or a regular file, but it must already exist and be
writable.
An optional label can be specified to name the volume. The name must be between
1-27 characters and cannot contain a colon (:). By default, the volume will be
named
Untitled.
If the destination medium is partitioned, one partition must be selected to
receive the filesystem. If there is only one HFS partition on the medium, it
will be selected by default. Otherwise, the desired partition number must be
specified (as the ordinal
nth HFS partition) on the command-line. The
size of the partition determines the size of the resulting volume.
Partition number
0 can be specified to format the entire medium as a
single filesystem without a partition map, erasing any existing partition
information. Since this will destroy all the partitions, the
-f option
must be specified to force this operation if the medium currently contains a
partition map.
If the medium is not partitioned (or if partition 0 is specified), the size or
capacity of the medium determines the size of the resulting volume.
The new volume will be empty and will become "current" so subsequent
commands will refer to it. The current working directory for the volume is set
to the root of the volume.
EXAMPLES¶
- % hformat /dev/fd0
- If a floppy disk is available as /dev/fd0, this
formats the disk as an HFS volume named Untitled. (N.B. The floppy
must already have received a low-level format by other means.)
- % dd if=/dev/zero of=disk.hfs bs=1k count=800
- % hformat -l "Test Disk" disk.hfs
- This sequence creates an 800K HFS volume image in the file
disk.hfs in the current directory, and names it Test
Disk.
- % hformat -l "Loma Prieta" /dev/sd2 1
- If a SCSI disk is available as /dev/sd2, this
initializes the first HFS partition on the disk (which must already exist)
with a new filesystem, naming the resulting volume Loma
Prieta.
- % hformat -f /dev/sd2 0
- This causes the medium accessible as /dev/sd2 to be
reformatted as a single HFS volume, ignoring and erasing any existing
partition information on the medium. The -f option must be
specified if the medium is currently partitioned; otherwise the command
will fail.
NOTES¶
This command does not create or alter partition maps, although it can erase them
(as described above). Any partition number specified on the command line must
already exist.
The smallest volume size which can be formatted with
hformat is 800K.
SEE ALSO¶
hfsutils(1),
hmount(1)
FILES¶
$HOME/.hcwd
AUTHOR¶
Robert Leslie <rob@mars.org>