Superformatting
Formatting a floppy disk at a capacity that the disk is not designed for
title: "Superformatting" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["floppy-disk-computer-storage"] description: "Formatting a floppy disk at a capacity that the disk is not designed for" topic_path: "technology/computing" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superformatting" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Formatting a floppy disk at a capacity that the disk is not designed for ::
Superformatting is the process of formatting a floppy disk at a capacity that the disk is not designed for. It can ruin a floppy disk, but it is used in some floppy-based Linux distros to increase the room for applications and utilities. muLinux is a notable example of this technique. Another common use (which is not as popular nowadays) was to format low-density 3.5-inch or 5.25-inch floppies as high-density, or in the case of 3.5-inch disks, even extra-high density (HD-36).
"Notched" disks will usually turn up a lot of bad sectors, especially if the formatted capacity is a considerable (1.5 to 3) number of times higher than intended. Superformatting is usually done with a low-level format (such as FORMAT /U in MS-DOS and [fdformat](fdformat) in Linux.)
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::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::