Floppy woes if ejected without umount'ing

itsjustme · 06-20-2003, 04:47 PM

You know how if you eject a floppy disk without umount the disk becomes unuseable?

Is that forever -- throw it in the trash? Or, is there a fix for the diskette?

thanks...

DavidPhillips · 06-20-2003, 05:00 PM

Why would you do that anyway?

try formating it

itsjustme · 06-20-2003, 05:05 PM

Well, it's easy to accidentally push the eject button without doing the umount first. (Not that I wanted to!)

But, in case you've never done it, you can't then just format it, or even read it for that matter, even on a Windows system.

If there is some utility out there specific to fixing a floppy screwed up this way, then great. Otherwise, it's a loss I'll have to live with, I reckon.

thanks...

acid_kewpie · 06-20-2003, 05:10 PM

huh? that won't damage the disk at all...

itsjustme · 06-20-2003, 05:22 PM

Uh, are you sure? Have you ever done it?

From a console - slap a floppy in, mount it, write a couple of files to it, then eject it without umount'ing.

It's been my experience, more than once I'm sorry to say, that once the diskette is ejected, it is no longer useable.

DavidPhillips · 06-20-2003, 06:06 PM

ok, I have a couple of thousand laying around I'll try it

DavidPhillips · 06-20-2003, 06:11 PM

ok I have mounted a floppy, wrote files to it. ejected it. put it back in looked at it.

There is no way it can be hurt at this point, now what

I can't recreate the problem

DavidPhillips · 06-20-2003, 06:12 PM

was the green light on when you ejected it?

itsjustme · 06-20-2003, 06:16 PM

Nope.

Hmmmm.....

So, you have to 'mount' a floppy, but you don't have to 'umount' it?

I'll have to do some more testing also.

I just don't have any extra floppies lying around.

Proud · 06-20-2003, 06:17 PM

Slightly off topic, but... you 'accidentally' ejected a floppy? All the drives I've seen involve considerable sized sledgehammers to operate!

Well not quite, but you have to put some force behind it, just brushing or tapping the button won't pop it out.

itsjustme · 06-20-2003, 06:19 PM

I didn't accidentally eject it.

I accidentally ejected it without running 'umount' first.

acid_kewpie · 06-20-2003, 06:22 PM

if there is no disk activity then just replace the disk and carry on...

Proud · 06-20-2003, 06:23 PM

Slim chance, but if you still haven't used the floppy drive, how about putting the thing back in and then umount it? Another test David?

DavidPhillips · 06-20-2003, 06:27 PM

right, that's all I did.

no problem.

However the files you added during the mount session may not be there yet. They are written during umount.

putting it into another machine reveals it's still empty. Put it back and umount it and the files are there.

DavidPhillips · 06-20-2003, 06:29 PM

I would think it can possibly be damaged by yanking it out during a write.