SuSE 9. When I insert a virgin floppy into the drive, I can write data to it, and as long as I leave it in the drive, I can read it, but when I remove the disk and then insert it again, the drive light comes on and does something to the disk because the data is no longer there when I "open" it, and yet when I try to write anything to it (including overwriting the document I had just put on it) it says access denied. Now there is something in the SuSE book about unmounting the drive before removing the disk to preserve the data, but how do you do that? And then do I have to remount it when I put it back in to make it useable? And if so, how do I do that? I am a total newbie so please answer in simple terms :-)

Thanks,

Karl

man mount
man umount

mount /mnt/floppy
umount /mnt/floppy

will mount and unmount. I think suse may auto mount.. but before you remove you might want to use umount /mnt/floppy (make sure you are not in its way)

Assuming you have the "floppy"icon on the desktop.
Put in floppy click on icon floppy opens
save files/data to floppy
close the "floppy screen"
right click on icon and "unmount"

Thank you Area51. That is the simplest scheme and works perfectly. They have a detailed page on formating the floppy, which can be done two ways, either from the main menu or by typing kfloppy in a command line, so I have fixed the 3 floppies I messed up earlier.

I really appreciate the help. It seems rather dangerous to me that you have to unmount it or the data will be forever lost apparently if you fail to unmount it and then try to read it again in Linux, altho it is still there in Windows.

As a total newbie to Linux (1 ghastly week), I feel like I am in a cross between "Area51" and DOS with no decent instruction manual!

Karl