This is easy. Insert a floppy and enter:

mke2fs /dev/fd0

Before you can format a Zip disk in Linux you first need to run it through the Linux fdisk program. From then on, it's simply a case of issuing the mke2fs command every time you want that disk formatted.

- 1 -

Logged into a normal user account, insert a Zip disk and enter:

su - -c 'fdisk /dev/hdc'

* Remembering to change hdc to your Zip drive's setup.

- 2 -

Enter:

d     (delete a partition)
Partition number (1-4): 4

- 3 -

Enter:

n     (add a new partition)
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-32, default 1): 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-32, default 32): 32

- 4 -

Enter:

w     (write table to disk and exit)

To format a Linux-formatted (ext2) Zip disk, enter:

mke2fs /dev/hdc1

Notice how the Zip disk now uses partition 1 instead of partition 4, since that's what you allocated in fdisk.