Re: LS-120 Formatting?

Riley Williams (rhw@bigfoot.com)
Sun, 20 Dec 1998 17:23:10 +0000 (GMT)


Hi there.

>>>> mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdb

>>>> works just fine, formats to 120 MB or 1.44 depending on media.

>>> No. NOT FORMATS. Just make filesystem. What you'll do when you'll
>>> have new 1.44 floppy NOT formatted (LOW-LEVEL formatted, that
>>> is!!!) ? mkfs.ext2 will just say: "could not write" or something

>> Why would it do something stupid like that?

> Since it was designed this way :-)

Then the design is flawed...

>> All I know is, I buy my 1.44 floppies unformatted (as they're
>> cheaper that way),

> They are still low-level formatted, just not tested.

Really ???

>> and use the following command to format them:

>> mke2fs /dev/fd0 <= What DOS calls A:
>> mke2fs /dev/fd1 <= What DOS calls B:
>> mke2fs /dev/fd2 <= What DOS calls G:
>> mke2fs /dev/sda4 <= What DOS calls H:
> ^^^^^^^^^

> This is not even physical disk :-))

That's what my JazDrive appears as. From Linux, I can do the same with
/dev/sda and it works just as well, but DOS doesnae recognise it
unless it's partitioned...

> RW> All work quite happily...

> Great. Now take 1.88Mb floppy (maked with xdfcopy) and explain how
> to create standard 1.44Mb floppy with mkfs.ext2 :-))

mke2fs /dev/fd0H1440

> Format under DOS will do this quite happily.

Why bother with DOS ???

> Or even simpler: take 1.44Mb floppy and make 720Kb floppy from it
> (this is safe).

mke2fs /dev/fd0D720

I regularly do the latter, and have never had any problems with it...

> Again format under DOS will do this just fine.

Again, why bother with DOS ???

> PS. May be you have specially modified mkfs.ext2 which could do
> low-level format but standard mkfs.ext2 will do just it: create
> ext2fs filesystem on low-level formatted driver.

If I do, then RedHat have been supplying a patched version since at
least RedHat 4.1 when I started with Linux - I've been doing the above
since then...

For reference, from this system:

Q> $ ls -lFG /dev/fd0*
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 0 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 12 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0D360
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 16 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0D720
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 28 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0H1440
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 12 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0H360
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 16 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0H720
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 4 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0d360
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 8 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0h1200
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 20 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0h360
Q> brw-rw-r-- 1 root 2, 24 May 5 1998 /dev/fd0h720
Q> $

Best wishes from Riley.

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