usb floppy not working

r_jr · 06-01-2012, 01:39 PM

I am trying to get my usb floppy on Ubuntu 10.04 to work as my internal one seems to be dead. lsusb and hwinfo list it, but nothing I do seems to allow me to access the floppy drive. There is no listing in fstab or mtab for it either though fstab has a listing for the internal floppy /dev/fd0. Anyone know what I need to do to get my USB floppy drive to work. I would write a udev rule, but I can't figure how to just mount it at the moment.

michaelk · 06-01-2012, 02:37 PM

With a disk inserted it should behave like a flash drive i.e. have a device ID like /dev/sdb etc and automount. Look at the output of the demesg command to see if it is being recognised.

camorri · 06-01-2012, 02:40 PM

Quote:

but I can't figure how to just mount it at the moment.

You need to be root to mount floppy drives, so if its buntu, use sudo. The mount command should look like this:

'mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy' ( without the quotes ). Go to the /dev directory and verify you have a fd0. If that is there, then go to the mount point, and verify it is there. The mount point is just an empty directory. On my system I use /media/floppy since it was there after the install.

I have no experience with a USB floppy. The mount command would be similar, other than the fd0, probably be fd1.

As far as udev rules, don't think you have to have one for the floppy. You can create one if you had problems with the fd number after you hot plug it, should work without it.

alfredo10 · 06-01-2012, 02:41 PM

Hi!
PartedMagic is both an operating system and a collection of useful tools - I would download it, burn an image
and boot from it:
http://partedmagic.com/doku.php
alfredo

John VV · 06-01-2012, 08:43 PM

The newer kernels DO NOT even look for a 3.5 floppy
there are NO new 3.5 disks being manufactured nor are any new drives being made
you need to run

Code:

 
su -
modprobe floppy
mkdir /mnt/floppy
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

I have a 12 year old box with a 3.5 drive running SL6.2 and that is how it is mounted

however there might be issues with a use floppy and modprode

michaelk · 06-02-2012, 08:09 AM

FYI USB floppy drives do not use the floppy module. They basically look like a flash reader to the OS. Granted it has been a few years since I've used one...

r_jr · 06-03-2012, 06:09 PM

Okay, I got it to work using the information here http://askubuntu.com/questions/14733...-drive-to-work. I ran

Quote:

fdisk -l

to find the dev associated with the usb floppy and then used the command

Quote:

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sde /media/usbfloppy -o uid=1000

. It works now and I can access the floppy. I now just need to figure out how to automount it. I suppose I need to write a udev rule for this.

JanDerek · 06-08-2012, 01:56 AM

Floppy disks are really unreliable, there are common cases where the read/write heads on a drive get mis-alligned and disks written on it will only be readable by the original drive they were made on. To know more about floppy try looking here : http://www.techyv.com/article/online-storage-services

r_jr · 06-09-2012, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JanDerek

Floppy disks are really unreliable, there are common cases where the read/write heads on a drive get mis-alligned and disks written on it will only be readable by the original drive they were made on. To know more about floppy try looking here : http://www.techyv.com/article/online-storage-services

I am not really sure what that has to do with anything as that is not the question I was asking about. I am fully aware of the problems related to floppies. the same could be said for hard drives though the quality has gotten better in the years since the last hard drive I had took a dive. Also CDs are not without their faults either. I have had more than one CD come to me unreadable so that I had to make a copy to read the data on it. As for floppies, they were used successfully for a number of years, both 5.25 and later 3.5. As long as you keep a copy somewhere you should be okay, but that pertains to most data that you use. I have to admit I don't backup my system like I should, but I don't really have anything that is all that critical if I were to lose it and the data that I do care about I store on a file server just to be safe.

The reason for using a floppy is that DRDOS and other older operating systems do not come on a CD or a DVD. Granted there is not much use for these operating systems, but sometimes I like to play around with them. In this case it is just to see if I can install them on VMWare or Virtualbox. I did manage to get Win98 installed on a Linux machine which I thought was interesting though it did not solve my problem of getting my old scanner to work as I had only recently thrown away the software for it as I had considered it to be useless. Now it looks like I will have to buy a new scanner as even Linux will not work with this scanner, a Visioneer 7600USB one touch. Oh well.

Thanks for the info though.