fdformat giving error...

I'm brand spankin' new to Linux and have just installed Mandrake 8.1. Right now I am playing around trying to figure out the basics. I want to format a floppy so I did the following:

fdformat /dev/fd0H1440

I get "No such file or directory"

If I do:

fdformat /dev/fd0

The disk formats but I cant run mke2fs b/c I get a "bad blocks count" error...

Any ideas? Thanks in advance

What about
fdformat -H -v -t dos /dev/fd0
? Or do you really need ext2fs on a 1.44?

fdformat doesn't accept any params except -n.

I was able to get the format and file system copy to work by doing the following:

setfdrpm /dev/fd0 2880 18 2 80 0 0x1b 0x00 0xcf 0x6c
fdformat /dev/fd0
mke2fs dos /dev/fd0 --this only worked as root?!?

There's got to be an easier way to do it than the above, right? Is there something I can set somewhere so that the setfdprm step can be avoided? Can I make /dev/fd0 just default to the value I set in the setfdprm command when I mount the device?