FDFORMAT(8)

💾 FDFORMAT — bestie's guide to low-level formatting floppies ✨

okay so real talk, this is the manual page for fdformat, which lives in section 8 (System Administration) of the manual, because she is a big-girl sysadmin tool, not some lil userland thing. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

fdformat — low-level format a floppy disk

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

fdformat [options] device

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So fdformat does a low-level format on a floppy disk. iconic, retro, deeply 90s of her. 💅

The device you hand her is usually one of these (and for floppy devices the major = 2, while the minor is shown for informational purposes only — so don't @ me about it, it's literally just for your info):

/dev/fd0d360  (minor = 4)
/dev/fd0h1200 (minor = 8)
/dev/fd0D360  (minor = 12)
/dev/fd0H360  (minor = 12)
/dev/fd0D720  (minor = 16)
/dev/fd0H720  (minor = 16)
/dev/fd0h360  (minor = 20)
/dev/fd0h720  (minor = 24)
/dev/fd0H1440 (minor = 28)

/dev/fd1d360 (minor = 5)
/dev/fd1h1200 (minor = 9)
/dev/fd1D360 (minor = 13)
/dev/fd1H360 (minor = 13)
/dev/fd1D720 (minor = 17)
/dev/fd1H720 (minor = 17)
/dev/fd1h360 (minor = 21)
/dev/fd1h720 (minor = 25)
/dev/fd1H1440 (minor = 29)

now the tea on the generic ones: the generic floppy devices, /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1, will fail to work with fdformat when a non-standard format is being used, or if the format has not been autodetected earlier. 😭 no cap. in that case, use setfdprm(8) to load the disk parameters. problem solved, bestie.

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -f, --from N — start at the track N (default is 0). like, begin here.
• -t, --to N — stop at the track N.
• -r, --repair N — try to repair tracks that failed during the verification (max N retries). healing era. 🫶
• -n, --no-verify — skip the verification that is normally performed after the formatting. living dangerously, love that for you.
• -h, --help — display help text and exit.
• -V, --version — display version and exit.

📝 NOTES 📝

heads up!! this utility does not handle USB floppy disk drives. 🚫 use ufiformat(8) instead. iykyk.

🧚 AUTHORS 🧚

Werner Almesberger <almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch> — shoutout to the legend, main character energy fr fr. ⭐

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

fd(4), emkfs(8), mkfs(8), setfdprm(8), ufiformat(8)

💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

For bug reports, use the issue tracker at <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. pls be nice and include the deets, bestie. 🙈

🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

The fdformat command is part of the util-linux package, which can be downloaded from the Linux Kernel Archive at <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. go get her. 💜

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and that's the whole vibe check, bestie — this was util-linux 2.41.6, dated 2026-08-31, straight from the FDFORMAT(8) era. slay, stay formatted, and don't forget your floppy. 🦋✨