## Note of warning

           This  manpage  has  been  automatically   generated   from
           mtools's  texinfo  documentation,  and may not be entirely
           accurate or complete.  See the end of this  man  page  for
           details.

## Description

           The mformat command is used to add an MS-DOS filesystem to
           a low-level formatted diskette. Its syntax is:

           mformat [-t cylinders] [-h heads] [-n sectors]
             [-f size] [-1] [-4] [-8]
             [-v volume_label]
             [-F] [-S sizecode] [-X]
             [-2 sectors_on_track_0] [-3]
             [-0 rate_on_track_0] [-A rate_on_other_tracks]
             [-M software_sector_size]
             [-N serial_number] [-a]
             [-C] [-H hidden_sectors] [-I fsVersion]
             [-r root_sectors] [-L fat_len]
             [-B boot_sector] [-k]
             drive:

           Mformat adds a minimal  MS-DOS  filesystem  (boot  sector,
           FAT,  and  root  directory) to a diskette that has already
           been formatted by a Unix low-level format.

           The following options are supported: (The S, 2,  1  and  M
           options may not exist if this copy of mtools has been com
           piled without the USE_2M option)

           The following options are the same  as  for  Dos's  format
           command:

## Options

           v      Specifies  the volume label. A volume label identi
                  fies the disk and can be a maximum  of  11  charac
                  ters. If you omit the -v switch, mlabel will assign
                  no label to the disk.

           f      Specifies the size of the DOS filesystem to format.
                  Only  a certain number of predefined sizes are sup
                  ported by this flag; for others  use  the  -h/-t/-n
                  flags. The following sizes are supported:

                  160    160K,  single-sided, 8 sectors per track, 40
                  1200   1200K, double-sided, 15 sectors  per  track,
                         80 cylinders (for 5 1/4 HD)

                  1440   1440K,  double-sided,  18 sectors per track,
                         80 cylinders (for 3 1/2 HD)

                  2880   2880K, double-sided, 36 sectors  per  track,
                         80 cylinders (for 3 1/2 ED)

           t      Specifies the number of tracks on the disk.

           h      The number of heads (sides).

           n      Specifies  the  number of sectors per track. If the
                  2m option  is  given,  number  of  512-byte  sector
                  equivalents  on  generic  tracks  (i.e.  not head 0
                  track 0).  If the 2m option is not given, number of
                  physical  sectors  per  track  (which may be bigger
                  than 512 bytes).

           1      Formats a single side (equivalent to -h 1)

           4      Formats a 360K double-sided disk (equivalent to  -f
                  360).  When  used together with -the 1 switch, this
                  switch formats a 180K disk

           8      Formats a disk with 8 sectors per track.

           MSDOS format's q, u and b options are not supported, and s
           has a different meaning.

           The following options are specific to mtools:

           F      Format the partition as FAT32.

           S      The  sizecode. The size of the sector is 2 ^ (size
                  code + 7).

           X      formats the disk as an XDF disk. See  section  XDF,
                  for  more  details.  The  disk has first to be low-
                  level formatted using the xdfcopy utility  included
                  in  the  fdutils  package.  XDF  disks are used for
                  instance for OS/2 install disks.

           2      2m format. The parameter to this  option  describes
                  the  number  of  sectors  on  track 0, head 0. This
                  option is recommended for sectors bigger than  nor
                  mal.

           3      don't use a 2m format, even if the current geometry
                  of the disk is a 2m geometry.
                  in the OEM label.

           C      creates  the  disk image file to install the MS-DOS
                  filesystem on it. Obviously,  this  is  useless  on
                  physical  devices  such  as  floppies and hard disk
                  partitions, but is interesting for image files.

           H      number of hidden sectors. This parameter is  useful
                  for  formatting  hard disk partition, which are not
                  aligned on track boundaries  (i.e.  first  head  of
                  first  track  doesn't  belong to the partition, but
                  contains a partition table). In that case the  num
                  ber  of  hidden sectors is in general the number of
                  sectors per cylinder. This is untested.

           I      Sets the  fsVersion  id  when  formatting  a  FAT32
                  drive.   In order to find this out, run minfo on an
                  existing FAT32 drive, and mail me about  it,  so  I
                  can include the correct value in future versions of
                  mtools.

           c      Sets the size of a cluster (in sectors).   If  this
                  cluster  size would generate a FAT that too big for
                  its number of bits, mtools automatically  increases
                  the cluster size, until the FAT is small enough.

           r      Sets  the  size of the root directory (in sectors).
                  Only applicable to 12 and 16 bit FATs.

           L      Sets the length of the FAT.

           B      Use the bootsector stored  in  the  given  file  or
                  device,  instead of using its own.  Only the geome
                  try fields are updated to match  the  target  disks
                  parameters.

           k      Keep  the existing boot sector as much as possible.
                  Only the geometry fields and other similar filesys
                  tem  data  are  updated  to  match the target disks
                  parameters.

           To format a diskette at a density other than the  default,
           you  must  supply (at least) those command line parameters
           that are different from the default.

           Mformat returns 0 on success or 1 on failure.

           It doesn't record bad block information to  the  Fat,  use
           mbadblocks for that.

## See Also

           *      To generate a printable copy from the texinfo  doc,
                  run the following commands:

                         ./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi

           *      To generate a html copy,  run:

                         ./configure; make html

                  A     premade     html    can    be    found    at:
                  `http://mtools.linux.lu'     and      also      at:
                  `http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/mtools'

           *      To  generate  an  info copy (browsable using emacs'
                  info mode), run:

                         ./configure; make info

           The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html.
           Indeed, in the info version certain examples are difficult
           to read due to the quoting conventions used in info.

    mtools-3.9.8                 02Nov02                   mformat(1)