Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rocky8!cucard!ccnysci!jeffrey
From: jeffrey@ccnysci.UUCP (Jeffrey L Bromberger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Floppy formatting/available disk space
Summary: Is it better to use 8 or 10 sectors per disk?
Keywords: ATT-7300 iv mkfs cpio
Message-ID: <974@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 9 Nov 88 16:56:58 GMT
Reply-To: jeffrey@ccnysci.UUCP (Jeffrey L Bromberger)
Followup-To: comp.sys.att
Organization: City College of New York
Lines: 22

In the iv library (/usr/lib/iv) there are 6 different formats for a
floppy disk.  The "Format Floppy" window uses the FDnl (Floppy Disk-no
loader) format, and then runs a mkfs to give a filestore with just
over 600 blocks and 100 inodes.  Would there be any advantage to using
the FD10nl (10 sectors per track) format instead of the standard 8
sector format?  How would one change the parameters to mkfs to use the
larger number of blocks?

I've also noted that cpio will work on a disk that has been formatted,
but has no filestore written (the disk has been iv'd but not mkfs'd).
Would the amount of data stored on a disk (by cpio) increase by using
the 10 sector format?

As an aside, what exactly does the "loader" (either silent or verbose)
do?  Is there a simple example of when one would use this loader?

Thanks for any info you can give me.
-- 
Jeffrey L. Bromberger
System Operator---City College of New York---Science Computing Facility
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