Add a section on floppy drives to the disks chapter.
PR: 33164, 34474 33164 Submitted by: Julio Merino <juli@merino.net> 34474 Submitted by: Tom Rhodes <darklogik@pittgoth.com>
This commit is contained in:
Jim Mock
parent
bcd0872a40
commit
91c5268d54
Notes:
svn2git
2020-12-08 03:00:23 +00:00
svn path=/head/; revision=12029
1 changed files with 151 additions and 3 deletions
|
|
@ -1994,14 +1994,162 @@ echo "The floppy has been unmounted and is now ready."]]></programlisting>
|
|||
</sect2>
|
||||
</sect1>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect1 id="floppies">
|
||||
<sect1info>
|
||||
<authorgroup>
|
||||
<author>
|
||||
<firstname>Julio</firstname>
|
||||
<surname>Merino</surname>
|
||||
<contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
|
||||
</author>
|
||||
</authorgroup>
|
||||
<!-- 24 Dec 2001 -->
|
||||
</sect1info>
|
||||
|
||||
<title>Floppy disks</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Floppy disks are, nowadays, an old-fashioned medium to
|
||||
store/share data. Although, there are still some times when you
|
||||
need to use them, because you do not have any other removable
|
||||
storage media or you need to use what you have saved in them on
|
||||
any other computer.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>This section will explain how to use floppy disks in
|
||||
FreeBSD, that is, formating and copying/restoring data from
|
||||
them. But... I really have written this to help you about how to
|
||||
create forced-size floppies.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect2>
|
||||
<title>The device</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Floppy disks are accessed throught entries in
|
||||
<filename>/dev</filename> (like any other device). To access the
|
||||
raw floppy disk you can use <filename>/dev/rfdX</filename>,
|
||||
where X stands for the drive number, usually 0. When the disk is
|
||||
formatted you can use <filename>/dev/fdX</filename>, or
|
||||
whichever of the other devices named
|
||||
<filename>/dev/fdXY</filename>, where Y stands for a
|
||||
letter. These are all the same.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Other important devices are
|
||||
<filename>/dev/fdX.size</filename>, where size is a floppy disk
|
||||
size in kilobytes. These entries are used at low-level format
|
||||
time to determine the disk size.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Sometimes you will have to (re)create these entries under
|
||||
<filename>/dev</filename>. To do it, you can issue:</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cd /dev && ./MAKEDEV "fd*"</userinput></screen>
|
||||
</sect2>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect2>
|
||||
<title>Formatting</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>A floppy disk needs to be low-level formated before it can
|
||||
be used. This is usually done by the vendor but you may want to
|
||||
do it to check media integrity or to force the disk capacity to
|
||||
be bigger.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>To format the floppy at a low-level fashion you need to
|
||||
use <application>fdformat</application>. This utility expects
|
||||
the device name as an argument. We will use those
|
||||
<filename>/dev/fdX.size</filename> devices, which will allow us
|
||||
to format the floppy to its real size, or force them. So you
|
||||
insert a new 3.5inch floppy disk in your drive and issue:</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/rfd0.1440</userinput></screen>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>This will take a while... You should notice any disk error
|
||||
here (this can help you determining which disks are good or
|
||||
bad).</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>To force the floppy disk size, we will use other entries
|
||||
in <filename>/dev</filename>. Get the same floppy and issue:
|
||||
|
||||
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/rfd0.1720</userinput></screen>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>It will take some more time than before (forced disks are
|
||||
slower). When it finishes, you will have a 1720kb floppy disk,
|
||||
but for the moment you will not notice any difference. You may
|
||||
use other disk sizes that you can find in /dev, but the most
|
||||
stable/compatible is the 1720kb for 3.5inch disks.</para>
|
||||
</sect2>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect2>
|
||||
<title>The disklabel</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>After low-level formatting the disk, you will need to
|
||||
place a disklabel on it. This disklabel will be destroyed
|
||||
later, but it is needed by the system to determine the size of
|
||||
the disk and its geometry later.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>The new disklabel will take over the whole disk, and will
|
||||
contain all the proper information about the geometry of the
|
||||
normal or forced floppy. Take a look to
|
||||
<filename>/etc/disktab</filename> now; you will see geometry
|
||||
values of all kinds of floppy disks.
|
||||
|
||||
<para>You can run now <application>disklabel</application>
|
||||
like:</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/sbin/disklabel -B -r -w /dev/rfd0 fd(size)</userinput></screen>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Replace fd(size) with fd1440, fd1720 or whichever size you
|
||||
want. The last field instructs disklabel which entry to take
|
||||
from <filename>/etc/disktab</filename> to use.</para>
|
||||
</sect2>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect2>
|
||||
<title>The filesystem</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Now your floppy is ready to be high-level formated. This
|
||||
will place a new filesystem on it, which will let FreeBSD read
|
||||
and write to the disk. After creating the new filesystem, the
|
||||
disklabel is destroyed, so if you want to reformat the disk, you
|
||||
will have to recreate the disklabel another time.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>You can choose now which filesystem to use on your floppy.
|
||||
You can use UFS or FAT, though UFS is not a good idea for
|
||||
floppies. Choose FAT which is nice for floppies.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>To put a new filesystem on the floppy do this:</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/sbin/newfs_msdos /dev/fd0</userinput></screen>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>As we created a disklabel before, <application>newfs</application>
|
||||
will be able to fetch disk data and construct the new
|
||||
filesystem. And now, your disk is ready for use...</para>
|
||||
</sect2>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect2>
|
||||
<title>Using the floppy</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>You have two choices to use the floppy. You can either
|
||||
mount the disk with <application>mount_msdos</application>, or you can
|
||||
use <application>mtools</application>.
|
||||
<application>Mtools</application> are great, but you will need
|
||||
to install them from the ports system.</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Try it; issue a <application>mdir</application>. If you forced the
|
||||
disk, you will notice its extra size!</para>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>A last note about forced disks: they are compatible with
|
||||
practically all other operating systems without any external
|
||||
utility to read/write them. Microsoft systems will recognize
|
||||
them without problems. But note that there may be times when the
|
||||
floppy drive itself is not able to read them (this may happen
|
||||
with very old drives).</para>
|
||||
</sect2>
|
||||
</sect1>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect1 id="backups-floppybackups">
|
||||
<title>Backups to Floppies</title>
|
||||
|
||||
<sect2 id="floppies-using">
|
||||
<title>Can I Use floppies for Backing Up My Data?</title>
|
||||
<indexterm><primary>backup floppies</primary></indexterm>
|
||||
<indexterm><primary>floppy disks</primary></indexterm>
|
||||
|
||||
<indexterm><primary>backup floppies</primary></indexterm>
|
||||
<indexterm><primary>floppy disks</primary></indexterm>
|
||||
|
||||
<para>Floppy disks are not really a suitable media for
|
||||
making backups as:</para>
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in a new issue