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Can't get my external USB floppy drive to detect media

System: Debian wheezy

The external USB floppy drive seems to flash with its green led, access the disk, and then stop. The contents of the disk, regardless of formatting, don't appear in the filesystem file manager.

Code:

workstation@universe:~$ lsusb

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0846:4260 NetGear, Inc. WG111v3 54 Mbps Wireless [realtek RTL8187B]

Bus 004 Device 003: ID 03ee:6901 Mitsumi SmartDisk FDD

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver

Bus 003 Device 003: ID 03f0:4b11 Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 6200

Quote:

root@universe:/home/workstation# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006137b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 976760831 488379392 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 976762878 1465141247 244189185 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 976762880 1465141247 244189184 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 1 MB, 1474560 bytes
1 heads, 3 sectors/track, 960 cylinders, total 2880 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

I found this so far, but I don't understand it: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...0#post11285000

How can I tell if my external USB floppy drive is having the same issue?

Hi,

I thought floppys were extinct by now. But since you seem to still have one, I'll see what I can do for you. From what I can tell, your floppy is actually accessed. Otherwise you shouldn't have gotten the information from fdisk -l. (After all, that is read from the disk itself; you could have inseerted a 720Kb disk and the output would have been different).

The post you're referring to is about 5 years old, so I don't think it's relevant anymore. So can you mount the floppy manually? Run

Code:

mount -t auto /dev/sdb /mnt

as root and see if that solves your issue.

Regards,
Louis

no new operating system even looks for a 3.5 in floppy
you need to have the kernel start the mod

Code:

modprobe floppy

should find it ?
then you need to manually mount it
( it is not automatically done any longer)

Code:

mkdir /mnt/floppy

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

----------- or ---------

mount /dev/sdb /mnt/floppy

True the floppy module is not automatically loaded any more but it is just for the legacy floppy disk controller and not required for USB devices.

My USB floppy drive isn't handy at the moment to check and I don't remember if the disk was auto mounted like regular flash devices. Since it is recognised I would try to mount the disk as suggested in post #2. Also check the output of the dmesg command to check for errors.

It may have some interaction with bios on legacy usb.

Might as well peek at this too. http://askubuntu.com/questions/16859...rive-in-ubuntu