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(fdutils.info)Extended formats

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Storing more data on a floppy disk
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   This section describes the techniques that are used by Linux' floppy
driver and superformat to store more data than usual on a floppy disk.

   Each section contains a description of the technique used, lists the
usages of the disks formatted using this technique (whether they are
bootable, whether they are accessible on MS-DOS and for which kind of
filesystems they are suitable) and finishes with a table listing the
most interesting formats which can be obtained by the described
technique.

   The table lists for each format the media type it is used for, the
total capacity which can be achieved, the throughput for large reads or
writes and the media description for these disks.  This description can
the be used with superformat to make such disks, or with setfdprm to
configure the drive to read/write to them.  Some formats (the XDF and
XXDF formats) cannot be accessed directly, and thus there is no media
description for them.  For these, we indicate a formatting command used
to make these disks.  The formatting command assume that the disk is in
the first drive (`/dev/fd0').  Substitute `/dev/fd1' if you want to
format XDF or XXDF disks in the second drive.

More sectors

Using more sectors per track by packing them

close together

Interleave

Use interleave to pack the sectors even closer

together

Sector skewing

Speeding up multi-track reads

More cylinders

Use up to 83 cylinders

Larger sectors

Minimize per byte overhead by using larger sectors

Mixed size sectors

Minimize slack by using several sector sizes

in a same track

Smart use of the dtr

How to get more out of your disk by playing games

with the data transfer rate

2M

Make autodetection easyer by using a readable

first track

XDF

Fast high capacity formats

XXDF

Fast formats with even higher capacity