Howto Format floppy to FAT16?

snowyeoghan

I want to format a floppy to fat16. From what i've seen I cannot do this using the format tool in XP.
Anybody know how I go about doing this?

Thanks

Capt'n Midnight

out of curiousity , Why FAT16 instead of the normal floppy system of FAT 12 ?

was someting on sysinternals about putting NTFS on a floppy but the file index took nearly ~385KB IIRC

watty

Floppies never use FAT16. They are FAT12.

At command line:
format a:

You can't format a floppy in NTFS. The FS overhead is 20Mbyte. If you format a removable MO drive disc in NTFS you have to unmount it in Disk manager. NTFS drive letter volumes can't be ejected.

you could in theory mount a floppy as a "Removable Drive" rather than as a floppy and then format in any FS that can fit. I've formated SD cards and USB devices as FAT16, FAT32, EXT2(even in XP) and once in NTFS.

I can't imagine why you would want a FAT16 floppy.

C:\Documents and Settings\Watty>format /?
Formats a disk for use with Windows XP.

FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q]
FORMAT volume [/Q]

  volume          Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
                  mount point, or volume name.
  /FS:filesystem  Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS).
  /V:label        Specifies the volume label.
  /Q              Performs a quick format.
  /C              NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed
                  by default.
  /X              Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.  All opened
                  handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
  /A:size         Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings
                  are strongly recommended for general use.
                  NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
                  FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
                  (128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
                  FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
                  (128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).

                  Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
                  following restrictions on the number of clusters on a volume:

                  FAT: Number of clusters <= 65526
                  FAT32: 65526 < Number of clusters < 4177918

                  Format will immediately stop processing if it decides that
                  the above requirements cannot be met using the specified
                  cluster size.

                  NTFS compression is not supported for allocation unit sizes
                  above 4096.

  /F:size         Specifies the size of the floppy disk to format (1.44)
  /T:tracks       Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
  /N:sectors      Specifies the number of sectors per track.

"FAT12 remains in use on all common floppy disks, including 1.44MB one."

If the drive is a floppy drive Windows will use FAT12 format by default.

snowyeoghan

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

out of curiousity , Why FAT16 instead of the normal floppy system of FAT 12 ?

Iv found this question on every thread regarding this subject on the web. Basically its for studying the properties of FAT16 (for college).

Anyway, I've sorted it out; What I've done is create a partition on an external HD with FAT32 as well as FAT16. Sorted!

Thanks for the replies!

Capt'n Midnight

http://doc.sch130.nsc.ru/www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsfloppy.shtml

How NT Prevents NTFS on Floppies
Windows NT actually goes to some lengths to prevent a user from creating an NTFS floppy disk. The first line of prevention is in the format utility. If a user specifies an NTFS format, format checks to make sure that the media is not a floppy. Then it checks to see if the medium is large enough to fit "minimum" NTFS on-disk data structures. Finally, it attempts to make an NTFS log file that is 2MB in size - an operation that will obviously fail on a 1.44MB floppy.

How It Works
Using SoftICE for Windows NT I was able to trick format into creating an NTFS floppy disk with a log file that is only 256KB in size. This is large enough for NTFS to be able to function, and leaves 1MB of space on the floppy after NTFS structures have been created. To format an NTFS floppy, NTFSFlp copies the image of the NTFS floppy I created onto other floppy disks.

but back to the original problem , just get a USB flash drive if you want to play with formats and stuff - floppies are very slow

watty

Also very limited. Not enough space to experiment with defragmentation and the properties of the different FS.

Tesco also had 2 or 4 Euro USB SD card readers that look like an USB flash drive so an SD card can be used physically and SW like a USB or removable hard disk.