Can I format a disk in an external floppy drive

[Graham Watkins]

elmo wrote:
> Graham Watkins wrote:
>   
>> Hi all,
>>
>> When I got my new computer, it did not have a built-in floppy drive so I 
>> bought an external usb model.  Obviously floppy disks don't have much of 
>> a future so all I wanted to do was lift any valuable data off them, burn 
>> it to a CD and re-format the disks so that they could be given/thrown 
>> away.  However, kfloppy does not recognise the drive so I can't do it 
>> that way.   fdisk doesn't see it either.    Does anybody know what, if 
>> anything I should do to re-format the disks?
>>
>>   
>>     
> I use an external floppy..In Windows, it is B:\
>
> I use it the same way as an A:\ drive, formatting, etc.  I haven't tried 
> it in any Linux.
>
> elmo
>
>   
Windows is not an option.

A correction to my earlier mail: fdisk -l does now show the floppy 
device as sdc.  I'm not sure what all those partitions are about though.

Disk /dev/sdc: 1 MB, 1474560 bytes
1 heads, 3 sectors/track, 960 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 3 * 512 = 1536 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x73696420

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   ?   639983653   821462684   272218546+  20  Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(639983652, 0, 3)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(821462683, 0, 2)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdc2   ?   443394735   623053497   269488144   6b  Unknown
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(288, 110, 57) logical=(443394734, 0, 1)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(269, 101, 57) logical=(623053496, 0, 2)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdc3   ?   179663131   645784101   699181456   53  OnTrack DM6 Aux3
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(179663130, 0, 2)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(645784100, 0, 3)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdc4   *   464875888   464883000       10668+  49  Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(464875887, 0, 3)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(464882999, 0, 3)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.


-- 
Graham Watkins

"To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows
box, you just need to work on it."
SecurityFocus columnist Scott Granneman.