No, it's not. Formatting ("low level format") and making a filesystem
("high level format") are two fundamentally different things; in DOS,
the FORMAT command does them both for floppies, but not for hard disks
(FORMAT only makes the filesystem on a hard disk.)
In Linux, the formatting is traditionally done with the fdformat
command and making the filesystem with mkfs.<filesystem> for some
value of <filesystem>.
> >> All I know is, I buy my 1.44 floppies unformatted (as they're
> >> cheaper that way),
>
> > They are still low-level formatted, just not tested.
>
> Really ???
That seems unlikely, especially since different systems use different
magnetic modulation methods.
Anyway, if fdformat doesn't work on LS-120 drives, then either
fdformat, the kernel, or both needs to be updated. LS-120, being a
SCSI or ATAPI device, presumably only needs the high level FORMAT UNIT
command sent to it with the appropriate parameters.
-hpa
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