[PLUG] Making installation floppies
Derek Loree
drl at drloree.com
Sun Mar 9 22:41:02 UTC 2003
On Sun, 2003-03-09 at 19:32, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
>
> > Sounds like there is no formatting on the floppies or they are some
> > _really_ strange format. As you may know floppies typically get a
> > low-level format plus a system level. Could be you have really raw
> > bunch of floppies, ie. never used before. Try
> >
> > fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
> >
> > first then use the dd command.
>
> Rod,
>
> The disks are pre-formatted (vfat, of course). In any case, dd is a
> byte-by-byte copying tool so it doesn't matter whether or not the disk is
> formatted.
This isn't true. When I copy images of 1680k formatted disks, I have to
format the disk (with "superformat /dev/fd0 sect=21 cyl=80") to the
larger size before dd will successfully copy. So the formatting of a
floppy does add information to the disk that dd doesn't (or can't) copy.
Just thought I'd set the record straight.
Derek Loree
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