How to format a HD using a floppy?

[Nick Wilson]

Hi I have a machine that I'm trying various distros on (old machine) and I need to know how to format the HD using a floppy?
I assume I can format a floppy on my other linux system and then boot it in the other machine and run a command to format.
Could someone please give me step by steps on this?

Many thanks


Nick

[Razzle]

I suggest you make the floppy bootable and include some formatting tool (e.g. if you create the floppy with Windows you can just type A:\format C:
or you can get a zerofill utility (lowlevel format) from the homepage of your drive's manufacturer. These utilities usually create a bootable disk from which you can run the zerofill).

[Nick Wilson]

Hi
whats zerofill? I have a Linux box I can format floppies on with ext2fs so I'd like to be able to slot it and format the HD

cheers

Nick

[bdg1983]

Could you create a Linux bootdisk and then copy the Linux version of fdisk to it?

Does GNU Ranish run from dos or Linux? If dos, then get it from freshmeat.net, create a dos bootdisk and copy Ranish to the disk.

[Razzle]

zerofill is a utility to low-level format your HD
it's available at your drive's manufaturer (e.g. Maxtor: www.maxtor.com, (http://www.maxtor.com,) Quantum: www.quantum.com) (http://www.quantum.com))
it overwrites ALL your data with zeros (the same way you get your drive when you buy it)

[Ace69]

You can use Partition Magic to do this with ease. It is not free though. :(