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Newbie's Linux Manual
Formatting Floppy Disks and Zip Disks
by Laurence Hunter
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Formatting Floppy Disks

This is easy. Insert a floppy and enter:

mke2fs /dev/fd0
Formatting Zip Disks

Before you can format a Zip disk in Linux you first need to run it through the Linux fdisk program. From then on, it's simply a case of issuing the mke2fs command every time you want that disk formatted.

- 1 -

Logged into a normal user account, insert a Zip disk and enter:

su - -c 'fdisk /dev/hdc'

* Remembering to change hdc to your Zip drive's setup.

- 2 -

Enter:

d     (delete a partition)
Partition number (1-4): 4

- 3 -

Enter:

n     (add a new partition)
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-32, default 1): 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-32, default 32): 32

- 4 -

Enter:

w     (write table to disk and exit)
Now You Can Format the Zip Disk

To format a Linux-formatted (ext2) Zip disk, enter:

mke2fs /dev/hdc1

Notice how the Zip disk now uses partition 1 instead of partition 4, since that's what you allocated in fdisk.

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The Newbie's Linux Manual is reproduced on LinuxMall.com by permission. The Newbie's Linux Manual is written and maintained by Laurence Hunter. You can find much more of Laurence's work at his site: www.Linuxdot.org

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