Re: dd to format floppy

[Bob Proulx]

> A few years ago when I was messing around with linux I found a 'dd'
> command to format my
> 3 1/2 inch floppies for use on the linux operating system (no dos).
> I have spend now over 2 hours looking for the sequence and find only
> disk imaging for file to
> disk or disk to disk etc.  I know there is a way to format the floppy
> and then a way to add
> the file system to the disquete but I can't seem to find the information
> anywhere.

Using dd I think you were referring to the method of capturing the
image of a previously formatted floppy to disk.  Once captured that
image can be copied to a new floppy using dd.  The image can be either
a unix format or a dos format.  Here is one such usage.

Capture an existing formatted floppy.
  dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/tmp/floppy.image bs=16k

Copy it to a new floppy.
  dd of=/dev/fd0 if=/tmp/floppy.image bs=16k

Other ways of doing this include "mformat" from the mtools package.
That places an MS-DOS format onto a floppy and the mkfs command which
can place a variety of unix formats onto the floppy.

Bob