On Tue, 28 Dec 2004, Robert Elz wrote:

>    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).

Maybe I didn't explain it well. I talked about the "real" formatting here, 
not what DOS/Win call "formatting". Sure, they have to be "real" formatted 
once in factory --> but not in his case in order to bring a filesystem 
onto them.

>
>  | (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).

Yep.

>
> 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.

Mmm, perhaps. It's just wired because of those MS-guys calling "format" 
what we call "newfs".

>
>  | 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).

Hehe ... you've ever seen a good working floppy, especially if it's ten
years old and the eight years old drive has never seen a floppy before?

;-)

>
> kre
>
>

-Flo