Fdformat is the name of two unrelated programs:
* A command-line tool for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
that "
low-level formats" a floppy disk.
* A
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
tool written in
Pascal by Christoph H. Hochstätter that allows users to
format floppy disks to a higher than usual density, enabling the user to store up to 300
kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.
The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix '' kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quant ...
s more data on a normal high density 3.5" floppy disk. It also increases the speed of diskette I/O on these specially formatted disks using a technique called "Sector Sliding". In this technique, the physical sectors on the disk are ordered in such a way that when the drive advances to the next track, the next logical sector waiting to be read is immediately available to the read head.
See also
*
2M, a similar program that offers even higher capacity
*
DMF, a high-density diskette format used by Microsoft
*
VGA-Copy
VGA-Copy is an MS-DOS program to copy floppy disks. It is able to read defective floppy disks.
Development
VGA-Copy was created by the German software developer Thomas Mönkemeier. The main code was developed in Turbo Pascal; some low-level ...
, a similar program that allowed higher floppy disk capacity
*
XDF, a high-density diskette format used by IBM
External links
FTP for the DOS tool, version 1.8, compiled .exe and Pascal sources
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Floppy disk computer storage
Linux file system-related software