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FDWRITE(1)		     General Commands Manual		      FDWRITE(1)

NAME
     fdwrite -- format and write floppy disks

SYNOPSIS
     fdwrite [-v] [-y] [-f inputfile] [-d device]

DEPRECATION NOTICE
     fdwrite is deprecated and may not be present in FreeBSD 16.0 and later.

DESCRIPTION
     The  fdwrite  utility  formats  and  writes one and more floppy disks.  Any
     floppy disk device capable of formatting can be used.

     The fdwrite utility will ask the user (on /dev/tty) to insert a new  floppy
     and  press return.  The device will then be opened, and queried for its pa-
     rameters, then each track will be formatted, written  with  data  from  the
     inputfile,  read  back  and  compared.  When the floppy disk is filled, the
     process is repeated, with the next disk.  This continues until the  program
     is interrupted or EOF is encountered on the inputfile.

     The options are as follows:

	   -v	       Toggle  verbosity  on  stdout.  Default is ``on''.  After
		       device is opened first time the format will  be	printed.
		       During  operation progress will be reported with the num-
		       ber of tracks remaining on the current floppy  disk,  and
		       the  letters I, Z, F, W, R and C, which indicates comple-
		       tion of Input, Zero-fill, Format Write, Read and  Compare
		       of current track respectively.

	   -y	       Do  not	ask  for presence of a floppy disk in the drive.
		       This non-interactive flag is useful for shell scripts.

	   -f inputfile
		       Input file to read.  If none is given, stdin is assumed.

	   -d device   The name of the floppy device to write  to.   Default  is
		       /dev/fd0.

     The  fdwrite utility actually closes the device while it waits for the user
     to press return, it is thus quite possible to use the drive for other  pur-
     poses at this time and later resume writing with the next floppy.

     The  parameters  returned	from  device are used for formatting.  If custom
     formatting is needed, please use fdformat(8) instead.

EXAMPLES
     The fdwrite utility was planned as a tool to make life easier when  writing
     a set of floppies, one such use could be to write a tar-archive:

	   tar cf -. | gzip -9 | fdwrite -d /dev/fd0.1720 -v

     The  main	difference from using tar(1)'s multivolume facility is of course
     the formatting of the floppies, which here is done on the fly, thus  reduc-
     ing the amount of work for the floppy-jockey.

SEE ALSO
     fdformat(8)

HISTORY
     The  fdwrite  utility  was written while waiting for ``make world'' to com-
     plete.  Some of the code was taken from fdformat(8).

AUTHORS
     The program has been contributed by Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>.

BUGS
     Diagnostics are less than complete at present.

     If a floppy is sick, and the inputfile is seekable, it should ask the  user
     to  frisbee the disk, insert another, and rewind to the right spot and con-
     tinue.

     This concept could be extended to cover non-seekable input also by  employ-
     ing a temporary file.

     An  option (defaulting to zero) should allow the user to ask for retries in
     case of failure.

     At present a suitable tool for reading back a multivolume set  of	floppies
     is  missing.   Programs  like  tar(1) for instance, will do the job, if the
     data has not been compressed.  One can always trust dd(1) to  help  out  in
     this situation of course.

FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly	November 16, 2025		      FDWRITE(1)

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