Formatting DOS hard disks and diskettes

You can format DOS 5.0 diskettes and DOS partitions on your hard disk with the dosformat(1) command.

To format a DOS diskette, use the following syntax:

dosformat special

Note that you cannot specify A: (or a:) with dosformat. This is because A: is aliased to /dev/install, which cannot be formatted (see ``DOS devices under the UnixWare system''). You should therefore use /dev/rfd0, which automatically formats the floppy correctly for the drive type. (You can specify the complete device filename if you wish, for example, /dev/rfd096ds15 for a 5¼ inch 1.2MB drive.

For example, to format a diskette in the A: drive, type the following command:

   $ dosformat /dev/rfd0

You can format a diskette in the second drive by typing either of the following command lines:

   $ dosformat /dev/rfd1
   

   $ dosformat /dev/rfd196ds15

To format a DOS partition on your hard disk, use the following syntax:

dosformat special size

For example, to format the second partition of your hard drive as a 512MB DOS partition, type the following command:

dosformat /dev/rdsk/c0b0t0d0p2 1048576

Note that the size of the second partition must be equal to or larger than 512MB before you run dosformat. See fdisk(1M) for information on creating or modifying partitions.