Re: how to reformat floppies that have data on them

On Thursday 12 April 2007 19:02, Rick Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 13:43 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
On Thursday 12 April 2007 01:17, Rick Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 15:10 -0800, Fred Erickson wrote:
On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 19:29 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
On Tuesday 10 April 2007 23:06, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
Rick Stevens wrote:
For an MS-DOS floppy,

#fdformat /dev/fd0H1440;mformat a:

I don't think that udev creates anything but the /dev/fd0 for the
first floppy with the default settings...

Mikkel

Ok. Udev doesn't come into my equation, as I'm doing this on FC2.

I've now got a floppy formatted with a low level format using the
following.

[root@localhost djmons]# fdformat -n /dev/fd0H1440
Double-sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
Formatting ... done

Anyone can help with the correct syntax for using mformat to add a
filesystem to this low level formatted floppy.

Very frustrating.

Nigel.

Would one of the mkfs variants work for this?

You could try

mkfs -t msdos /dev/fd0
mkdosfs /dev/fd0

Sorry that this problem is dragging on. I tried mkfs, and mkdosfs, but
got errors again, as with mformat. See below.

Any further ideas folks.

I'm at a loss. Just for giggles, can you try a "mke2fs /dev/fd0" and
see if you can put an ext2 filesystem on one of the floppies. If not,
then I have to think there's a problem with the media or the drive
itself. In that case, try a fresh box of floppies first, then try to
get a new drive. Here in the US a new floppy drive is only about $10US.
I don't know what they are in France.

Yeh. I'm going into just for giggles mode now. See below.

[root@localhost djmons]# /sbin/mke2fs /dev/fd0
mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Warning: could not erase sector 2: Attempt to write block from filesystem
resulted in short write
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
184 inodes, 1440 blocks
72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
184 inodes per group

Warning: could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem
resulted in short read
Warning: could not erase sector 0: Attempt to write block from filesystem
resulted in short write
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:
Warning, had trouble writing out superblocks.done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 31 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
[root@localhost djmons]#

Still can't get hold of floppies, as my supplier hasn't any. Disk drive is as
good as new (recently replaced), and I also tried all this stuff on the other
machine that had Debian running, with exactly the same results. I'll have to
try and find another source for the floppies.

btw. I looked at the other machine, that I thought I could put the
firewall on, and that won't boot from cdrom either.

You're certain the CD was burned correctly?

I looked in the BIOS of the other machine, and the only boot options are
floppy, or harddrive.

I know what's going to happen here. The problem will be solved on the very day
that the new floppies arrive in the mail.

Unfortunately, I've only got a bike. Otherwise I could drive a few Miles, and
pick some up at a computer store.

Thanks for the help.

Nigel.

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