I have a usb floppy drive connected to my Linux box and it works fine however there is a noticeable issue. While the drive is healthy and functioning but when it is empty the drive heads constantly move as if trying to read an imaginary floppy disk. I can not figure out what is causing this since the drive works perfectly so I have no error messages to go on. I am worried that my drive might destroy itself doing this and also quite frankly the noise it makes is annoying. Also i keep a windows xp install for gaming that wont work with wine and the drive Linux. Since I have not the foggiest idea what the problem could be and since my system does not have an internal floppy controller I can not test a floppy drive to compare if it is a USB issue or a floppy issue or neither.

My Kernel version currently is 3.9.7 but I upgrade kernels regularly which does not do anything for this problem. The drive is a ID 0644:0000 TEAC Corp. Floppy.

Do you umount the floppy drive before removing a floppy disk?

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Steve Stites

It's as though the USB subsystem is polling to see if media is present. Similar to the head seek that you'd hear a floppy drive do during the POST and/or boot process (especially if you'd enabled booting from floppy in the BIOS). If that's what's going on, I'm not sure how to disable it. There might be a kernel parameter that controls that but I haven't run across it yet.

If you can power off the Teac drive when it's not actually in use, that would certainly stop it from seeking. Then only power it up when you're about to insert a floppy.

BTW, do you see entries show up in /var/log/messages when these seeks take place?


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Rick

I never thought that having it enabled in the BIOS might be part of the problem and I have not found a way to power down the device without physically pulling the plug. Also I have checked my logs and there is no mention of my drive performing any seek operations. The only message I have found in my log is:

[ 2.278216] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access TEAC USB UF000x 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS

Also to the first question asked to me. Yes i make sure I umount any drive before disable it / eject media from it.

As I think about it, I doubt the BIOS settings will have any effect; they're likely only for any internally connected drives (via the ribbon cable).

I can see how it'd be annoying to have to do that but I think if the drive seeks were noisy but, at least for the short term, is it a problem to have to unplug the drive when it's not actually holding a diskette? I'm not sure about the durability of the TEACs so perhaps unplugging it when it's not in use might be best -- not only to eliminate the seeking noises but to reduce the chance of harming the drive with all the unnecessary seeking with nothing loaded.

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R

Sorry to revive this old threat but it is the only one I found about this.

I have the exact same problem with a 34 pin floppy disk drive connector to USB adapter (TEAC USB UF000x), the head moves around every one seconds or so and the usage LED indicator stays on when no floppy disks are inserted, but the drive works well when a floppy is inserted.

So as I saw that the problem was not just mine, I reported it on the Linux Mint Launchpad bug reports section:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1602815

Maybe you can mark yourself as "affected" by this bug on Launchpad to bring it a little bit more of attention, and so that we can maybe get a fix.

If you are affected by it on another distros than Linux Mint please tell me and I'll post the bug report on that distro's Launchpad.

Thank you in advance, I hope we can get answers about this bug.

modern OS's do not even look for a 3.5 in floppy any more
the very last floppy was made a few years ago

run "modeprobe floppy" and see if it is detected

Hi, thank you for the quick answer.

I'm aware 3.5'' floppies are not in use any more. I'm actually doing this in order to have a proper floppy disk drive mounted in my computer in order to restore data from them, and use old DOS games I collect.

As for the floppy module, I already tried to install it with the "modprobe floppy" command, but it fails and throws the error "could not insert 'floppy': No such device". I also tried "modprobe -f floppy" to force the module installation, but it throws the error "could not insert 'floppy': Exec format error".

I reported trying those two commands in my Linux Mint Launchpad bug report, and as I just say, they both fail.

you might want to boot into centos 5.11
that os still auto mounts them
centos 6.8 needs modeprob ran

I'm actually under Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon 64-bit. The problem isn't that the floppy drive doesn't mount floppies correctly, when a floppy is inserted, I can mount it via Nemo and it works well.

The problem is that when no floppies are inserted, the floppy disk drive stays in use. The drive's magnetic head move around every second or so (and make noises) and the usage LED indicator stay on.

And I wish to stay under Linux Mint, but I'll try booting on CentOS via USB to check if it works.

The floppy module only applies to the legacy floppy disk controller and not to a USB device. I quick google did not find any real information about this adapter which does not help. Its been a few years since I had to use a "regular" USB floppy drive and don't remember having any problems but different OS/kernel.

There might be specific problems with the adapter itself and if that is the case then a software fix (if possible) is probably not going to happen. Although your device works I might consider purchasing a USB floppy drive like below.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Exter...duckgo-ffnt-20

Thank you for the answer.

Actually, the adapter works fine on Windows. When no floppy disks are inserted under Windows, the drive remains dormant and is only in use when a floppy disk is inserted. So this means the problem doesn't come from the adapter nor the drive, it must come from how Linux handles it. I explain it all in the bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1602815

My guess is that Linux keeps probing the USB to check if any changes occurred, as it would do to detect an USB drive being connected. In doing that, the floppy disk drive checks periodically if a floppy disk is inserted, and so stays in use all the time. I might be wrong, but it's the only reason I could think of for this bug.

But I actually don't know what proccess/protocol/probing causes that. Maybe it's down in the kernel?

P.S: I couldn't make a proper CentOS bootable live USB drive for some reason.

The latest CentOS 6 live version is supposed to be a hybrid so you should be able to use the dd command.

dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdx

Note: Replace with actual flash drive device ID. Please verify the correct destination device otherwise you could overwrite existing data and without a backup is unrecoverable.

It still could be a hardware problem that was fixed in the windows driver or something that does not conform to a USB standard. Not saying it isn't a linux USB problem...

For the CentOS live USB I need to use the 5.11 version as said John VV, as it apparently still has floppy drive support.

And I couldn't find any Linux drivers related to USB floppy drives or Floppy drive connector to USB adapters. Are there any?

Also, do you know what could periodically probe USB please?
I tried modifying the the /sys in order to disable autoprobing for USB devices with the following command:
echo '0' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers_autoprobe

It works, the drive's head doesn't move around and the usage LED indicator is turned off, but it just disables all the USB devices and the floppy drive doesn't respond when a floppy is inserted. Moreover, I tried putting it in /etc/rc.local, which works in disabling USB devices autoprobing, but it doesn't do it exactly at boot time, still making the USB floppy drive being detected and so it bugs out. I also tried to disable the autoprobing only for this device, but it was no use as it doesn't work.

Also, even when USB autoprobing is off, the drive is still detected with the lsusb command.

I truly don't know what to do, I've also tried to look around for over adapters or floppy drive controller cards, but the options doesn't seem to be fitting:
- The Catweasel, which is a PCI floppy drive controller board, but they seem to have been discontinued and I can't find one for sale;
- The Kryoflux, which seems good but is expensive and seems to be designed only for data restoration (I don't think it can mount floppy disks).

Does anyone know any over options? Thank you in advance.

The referenced support was for the legacy floppy disk controller i.e. those devices /dev/fd0 and has nothing to do with USB. Anything attached to USB will have a /dev/sdx device id. Disabling autoprobe keeps the kernel from enumerating the device i.e. no /dev/sdx device is automatically created and any related modules from loading.

No harm trying CentOS 6 with an older kernel.

The link I posted is for a USB floppy drive not an adapter that converts USB to a 34 pin floppy interface.