Re: Formatting a USB Floppy on Sony Vaio Z505JE.

On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 10:06, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Hi Andy,
> 
> > > OK, that sounds very logical, and obvious!  What are the standard HD
> > > formatting tools?  sformat?  I know it's not mkdosfs, etc.
> > 
> > man mkfs :)  That should give you all the fs creation info you need
> > with the exception of iso creation... but then again... why would you
> > want to stick a CD-ROM image on a floppy *lol*
> 
> No, mkfs isn't relevant AIUI.  As I said in my original email, "I don't
> mean write the filesystem data to it, but perform a `write track' in FDC
> 1772 terms."
> 
> The mkfs.* commands just write filesystem meta-data, e.g. superblock,
> and root directory, to the blocks of an already formatted media.  For a
> DOS floppy something, normally fdformat, has to use the FDC's `write
> track' command to lay down nine 512-byte sectors per track, 80 tracks
> per side, two sides.  Only then can the FDC be instructed to fetch bytes
> from, e.g. sector 1.
> 
> If I take a HD floppy and use libdsk to format it as five 1024-byte
> sectors per track, 80 tracks, double-sided, then I've formatted an Acorn
> ADFS 800KB floppy.  It neds reformatting back to 720KB before it can be
> understood once again as a DOS floppy.  After formatting, I can layout
> some bytes *within* the sectors in a representation of a particular
> filesystem.

Hmm... guess I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been.

Google gave me this:  http://users.actrix.gen.nz/michael/usbmount.html

The author has a step by step on doing an MS-DOS format on some USB
device that is treated as a floppy under MSWindows.  Perhaps that will
help?

I very rarely am formating devices so I tend to forget the particulars
and am always googling or using apropos on the CLI.

Sorry if I've been less helpful,
-Andy-