

It does not destroy data already on the disk.ĭevice is the location of the floppy disk drive unit.

High level formatting, also referred to as logical formatting, is the creation of a filesystem, including a table of contents, for the disk. This results in the destruction of any existing data on the disk. It consists of dividing the disk's tracks (80 per side for a standard 3.5-inch floppy) into a specified number of sectors and filling the data area of each sector with dummy byte values or with a pattern of test values. However, it can be useful to reformat them prior to use with other operating systems so that they will contain a filesystem more compatible with those operating systems (e.g., ext2 or ext3 for Linux).Ī low level format, also called a physical format, is the first step in formatting a disk. The fdformat command is used to perform the low-level formatting of floppy disks.įloppy disks usually come from the factory already formatted with a FAT (File Allocation Table) filesystem for use on MS-DOS and the Microsoft Windows operating systems.
