Date:        Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:40:55 +0100 (CET)
    From:        Florian Stoehr <netbsd@wolfnode.de>
    Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.4.61.0412280138380.548@irina.net.flo>

  | See man newfs_msdos", your option is "-F 32".

I'm pretty sure that was the answer that was wanted.

  | Formatting is not necessary for harddisks

That's not true, something has to do it - it's just that these
days they're always formatted at the factory and there's rarely
ever a reason to re-do that (rarely, not never).

  | (actually the "formatting" performed by DOS/Win is just a verify).

I suspect the question was using "format" in the dos/win sense of
"make that filesystem ready to contain files" - which is what we
call newfs (and which Brian seemed to know, he'd tried newfs already,
just missed newfs_msdos).

formatting in the other sense, of laying down the sector preambles
and headers (with sector i-d's) and stuff almost certainly never
crossed Brian's mind here.

  | You only need to format floppies; use "fdformat" for that task.

These days, floppies are almost always factory formatted as well,
there's rarely much need to bother with fdformat (unless your floppy
drive is badly wacked, in which case, fdformat might give you
floppies that you can use, but then they're only ever likely to
work in the drive they were formatted on).

kre