how to reformat floppies that have data on them

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Nigel Henry wrote:
> I can use dd to put data on a new formatted floppy, but how do I reuse an old 
> floppy. I tried it on linux using dd, but got input/output errors, and even 
> tried it on that other OS, but that couln't complete the format. I even tried 
> reformatting an XP boot floppy on XP, and it couldn't complete the format.
> 
> I'm a bit lost at the moment. I'd buy some new ones, but my supplier hasn't 
> any available.
> 
> I know floppies are legacy, but I have an old machine with my smoothwall 
> firewall on it, and it can't boot from cdrom, so I need to remake the 2 
> floppies that start off the install.
> 
> Nigel.
> 
You can format then with fdformat, but it sounds like you ether have
some bad floppies, or a dirty drive. So fdformat will probably also
fail. You may also need to run setfdprm if the system is trying to
use the wrong format. There is also a GUI tool to format floppies,
but I don't remember the name...

Mikkel
-- 

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