External USB floppy on RH 9.0

the_rydster · 11-05-2003, 07:17 AM

I have just connected a new Packard Bell USB floppy to my laptop upon which I have just installed RH 9.0.

Hardware browser seem to show that it has been detected, but upon trying to read from the floppy I get a mount error - /dev/sda: input/output error.

I think RH has a list of floppy devices in /dev. But I am a newbee and kind of stuck. This doesn't bode well for trying to sort out by lousy winmodem which is why I need this floppy to work.

Thanks.

the_rydster · 11-05-2003, 08:38 AM

hmmm looks like I can mount and unmount it now at both the command line and desktop.

Can't seem to use the desktop 'Floppy formatter' though. It says:

Unable to open device /dev/fd0, formatting cannot continue.

pandasonic · 11-07-2003, 02:16 AM

dude!!!! i have a toshiba satellite pro m15-s405 and same thing.. i tried my friend's Dell USB Floppy Drive and i had the same problem... some guy told me that since it's USB it's not under the regular /dev/fd0 because that's only for internal Floppy drives....

so yeah, it should be under /dev/sda... i was able to write and read from the floppy too but then when i tried to format it i got the '/dev/sda' and message.... well the point is i'm stuck also

the_rydster · 11-07-2003, 05:26 AM

Must be some way to get the Floppy Formatter to check /dev/sda instead.

I am still trying to learn the basic and I am not sure what to do.

I can live without formated disks for now....but it is annoying.

the_rydster · 11-08-2003, 12:59 PM

Still can't get it to format either graphically or at the command line.

I get either cannot find /dev/sda or /dev/fd0.

Made an attempt to replace /sda and/fd0 with symbolic links to /mnt/floppy but this didn't seem to work (although it could be that I did it wrong or should have rebooted or something - I got a bit scared cos I was messing with things I know little about as the su!!)