[mtools] FW: 'mformat' .vs. 'mkfs.vfat' on 230Mb MO

[Alec Voropay]

-----Original Message-----
From: Hodek Roman [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 6:50 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: 'mformat' .vs. 'mkfs.vfat' on 230Mb MO



> The 'mkfs.vfat' creates 512 root directore slots by default, while
> 'mformat' 176 only.

...then they use a different algorithm how to determine the size of
the root dir :) No big trouble, though. BTW, mkdosfs always makes 512
entries for harddisk (i.e., non-floppy) filesystems.

> these two utilities produces different format of MO :
> -media descriptor byte
> -sectors per fat

mkdosfs uses 0xf8 (== harddisk) for everything that isn't a floppy
device or doesn't look like a floppy-sized image. I'd say 0xf0 (==
3.5'' floppy, 1.44M or 2.88M) by mformat is somewhat incorrect, but
nobody looks at that media byte anyway :)

The different sectors per FAT (218 vs. 217) seems to come from a
different view on the device size. mkdosfs detects it to have 446324
sectors, whereas mformat assumes 444416 (== 217*32*64). It it looks to
me as mformat simply multiplies tracks*heads*sectors. mkdosfs instead
makes a real seek test how far it can go and thus how big the
device/image is. And since it has more sectors, it has more clusters,
and then it needs more FAT space to manage those clusters.

Roman


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