Formatting a floppy - Help required.

[Technical Director]

Hello,

Usually any type of floppy error can be associated with a 'bad' floppy. If
you've ever taken a floppy apart you will quickly realize that the
magnetic surface of the floppy has the feel and consistency of tissue
paper.

As well the majority of floppies are treated, myself included, as throwing
stars or other dust to be introduced by how I treat it methods. 

If I were you I would try a new floppy and see if you can format then. You
as well might look into the /etc/disktab file close to the top for other
instructions on how to format a floppy.

NOTE: I have gotten error messages using FreeBSD/Linux/Tru64 and no
messages on a Win32 boxen on one floppy. Then trusting the Win32 I ended
up losing data later when it finally reported that the floppy was no good.

I hope this helps somewhat.

R.

PS

I have heard that manufactuers only warranty their floppies for 3 months
from time of manufacture. That and the relative slow transfer speed makes
you wonder why we haven't moved to other more sexy methods of booting up.

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Verghese George wrote:

> I tried a simple command of formatting a floppy drive 
> #fdformat /dev/fd0
> 
> It comes up with an output 
> 
> Errors encountered:
> 
> cyl Head Sect Error
> 0     0       1   no address mark in ID field
> 0     1       1   no address mark in ID field
> 1     0       1    no address mark in ID field
> 1     1       1   no address mark in ID field
> 
> etc  
> 
> I tried the command
> fdformat /dev/fd0.1440 
> and fdformat -f 1440 /dev/fdo
> but the result is the same.
> Am  I doing something wrong?
> 
> I am using freebsd 5.1. I had no such problems when I was using version
> 4.0
> 
> 
> Verghese George
> 
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