Re: how to reformat floppies that have data on them

On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 19:40 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
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]#

Oh, yeah, you have some bad floppies! Nasty!

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.

Yup. Remember, floppies are a contact media, meaning that the head
actually "rubs" on the media. They wear out and the oxide does lose
some permeability over time.

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.

Oh. Old BIOS.

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.

Heheheheh! Yeah, you need floppies to update the BIOS on the old
machine, you have no floppies, and you can't install the OS until you
update the BIOS. Welcome to Catch 22! It's like having a can with the
can opener inside the can.

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

Sorry 'bout that. I live in Southern California. You can't survive
without a car (well, you can, but it's miserable!)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer rstevens@xxxxxxxxxxxx -
- VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com -
- -
- To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. -
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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