Removable Media Hardware Considerations

Keep the following restrictions in mind when working with diskettes:

• SPARC and x86 UFS formats are different. SPARC uses little-endian bit coding, x86 uses big-endian. Media formatted for UFS is restricted to the hardware platform on which they were formatted. So, a diskette formatted for UFS on a SPARC based platform cannot be used for UFS on an x86 platform. Likewise, a diskette formatted for UFS on an x86 platform cannot be used on a SPARC platform.

• A complete format for SunOS^TM file systems consists of the basic “bit” formatting in addition the structure to support a SunOS file system. A complete format for a DOS file system consists of the basic “bit” formatting in addition the structure to support either an MS-DOS or an NEC-DOS file system. The procedures required to prepare a media for each type of file system are different. Therefore, before you format a diskette, consider which procedure to follow. For more information, see Managing Removable Media (Task Map).

Diskette Hardware Considerations

Keep the following in mind when formatting diskettes:

• For information on diskette names, see Table 3–1.

• Diskettes that are not named (that is, they have no “label”) are assigned the default name of floppy.

A Solaris system can format the following diskette types:

• UFS

• MS-DOS or NEC-DOS (PCFS)

• UDFS

On a Solaris system (either SPARC or x86), you can format diskettes with the following densities.

By default, the diskette drive formats a diskette to a like density. This default means that a 1.44 Mbyte drive attempts to format a diskette for 1.44 Mbytes, regardless of whether the diskette is, in fact, a 1.44 Mbyte diskette, unless you instruct it otherwise. In other words, a diskette can be formatted to its capacity or lower, and a drive can format to its capacity or lower.