How to Format a Floppy Disk in Ubuntu

Formatting floppy disks is an easy process in Ubuntu.

Floppy drives are square disks that contain a thin magnetic storage medium. They have lost popularity due to their relatively small data storage limits compared to those of USB flash drives, CDs and DVDs. A floppy drive can only hold up to 200 megabytes of data, whereas a CD can store up to 700 megabytes of data. Some legacy computers still use floppy disks, so the Ubuntu operating system continues to support them.

Instructions

1. Insert the floppy disk into the floppy drive of your computer.

2. Open a terminal window, the option for which appears under the "Accessories" section of the main Applications window.

3. Type the command "dmesg" to make sure the floppy disk was recognized.

4. Type the command "sudo umount /dev/fd0" if the floppy disk was automatically mounted (accessed by the computer).

5. Type the command "sudo mformat -f 1440 A:" to format the floppy disk. This will make the disk Windows compatible.

References

• Ubuntu Geek: Tip:How to mount,unmount and format floppy disk in Ubuntu
• Ubuntu Documentation: Device Names in Linux