[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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