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Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc

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On 2019-03-17, Anders Andersson <pipatron@gmail.com> wrote:
>   I got myself a USB 3.5" disk drive and want to format a 3.5" HD disk
> so that it Just Works™ as a standard MS-DOS floppy.
>   Normally I would have used mformat from the mtools package, but it
> appears that I can not supply a device name, just "emulated names"
> like A: which are then translated to /dev/fd0 etc.

It seems you're supposed to use '/etc/mtools.conf' for this kind of
thing.

 drive m: file="/dev/sdc"

Then:

 mformat m:

This from a very cursory examination of the problem on the internets.

>   The problem is that my disk drive shows up as a SCSI device on
> /dev/sdc and I can not find a way to tell mformat to use it, so it
> seems that I have to use the traditional mkfs.fat to format my disk.
>   However, there are dozens of parameters such as number of FATs, FAT
> size, "media type", and I don't know anything about that! Can someone
> figure out what type of magic I need to supply to mkfs.fat for it to
> do exactly what mformat would to do a floppy, or alternatively, how to
> make mformat work with /dev/sdc?
>
>



-- 
“Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe,
which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain
and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched--love for instance--
we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.” - Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Anders Andersson <pipatron@gmail.com> - 2019-03-17 13:30 +0100
  Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2019-03-17 13:50 +0100
    Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2019-03-17 17:40 +0100
    Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Anders Andersson <pipatron@gmail.com> - 2019-03-20 20:50 +0100
  Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2019-03-17 17:50 +0100
    Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Anders Andersson <pipatron@gmail.com> - 2019-03-20 21:10 +0100
      Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2019-03-20 21:20 +0100
      Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2019-03-21 03:20 +0100
        Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Kenneth Parker <sea7kenp@gmail.com> - 2019-03-21 04:10 +0100
  Re: Format an MS-DOS floppy on /dev/sdc Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2019-03-20 21:10 +0100

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