How to Format a Floppy Disk in Linux

Floppy Disks

A floppy disk is a square disk that contains a thin magnetic material used to store information. The largest floppy disk holds 200 megabytes of data. These disks are mostly obsolete due to their small storage capabilities, but they are still used in some legacy systems. Formatting a floppy drive involves removing all the existing data on the disk. Once the disk is formatted, a new file system must be created so it can be used.

Instructions

1. Place the floppy disk in the computer's floppy drive.

2. Open a terminal window. The terminal window will be found under the "Utilities," "System Tools" or "Accessories" section of the main menu.

3. Type the command "umount /dev/fd0" to unmount the floppy disk, if it was automatically mounted.

4. Type the command "fdformat /dev/fd0" to format the floppy disk. This will format the disk, but will not create a file system.

5. Type the command "mkdosfs /dev/fd0" to create the file system. The floppy disk can be used on both the Linux and Windows operating systems.

6. Type the command "exit" to close the terminal window.

Tips & Warnings

• This will remove all data from the disk. It is an irreversible process.

References

• Linux Man Pages: fdformat
• Linux Man Pages: mkdosfs