Copy to/from floppy disk
 

Using Mandriva 2006 and KDE 3.4, I copy to and from a 1.44mb floppy by opening Konqueror and navigating to the /mnt/floppy and then by cut and paste or drag and drop, I move the file(s) to/from the floppy.
Is this the correct way ? The file(s) get moved but I get the intermitant message of "stalled" at every 64KB of data exchange in the transfer window. Is there a buffer setting that I need to change ? Am I doing this correctly ?
Thanks in advance,
Scott Nash

That is the correct way. Just make sure that you unmount the disk before you eject it or you will lose data.

Try to copy the data using the command line, and see if you get any errors. I don't think that it is anything to worry about though.

I hope this helps
--Ian

Thanks IBall,
How do I exactly unmount the floppy using the Konqueror GUI ?

Copying from the command line shows no errors.

Thanks,
Scott Nash

Navigate to the "storage media" folder in Konqueror, then right click -> eject the floppy icon.

But in this day & age, I don't understand why people still insist on mounting floppies.

Use MTools. If you want a GUI, use MToolsFM. There is no better way of handling floppies under Linux.

Programs like Mtools and other automatic mounting tools are a good idea, however they are not failsafe. If there are problems, then manually mounting and unmounting can show up errors that the automatic tools don't.

Also, I dont understand why people use floppy disks theese days (but I am sure that Cara25 has a good reason). USB flash drives, DVDs and network transfers are a much better idea where available or possible.

--Ian

Errr... MTools does not provide "automatic mounting."

According to their website:

"Mtools is a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS disks from Unix without mounting them." (emphasis added)

The method used is actually far safer than mounting, because writes to the disk are instantaneous and not cached. As long as the light is off, it is safe to eject the disk.

Try it and see.
Funny you mention that. Guess what software I use to access USB flash drives? Hint: Every USB flash drive I've ever seen has a FAT filesystem...

Sure, it isn't as flexible or dynamic as some systems, but is far simpler and much less cumbersome. And it beats the hell out of manually mounting them or adding lines to /etc/fstab.

Looks interesting. I assumed that it was just another automouting tool, but I was wrong. I guess it must access the disk using its device name, and mapping it to an alias or something. It certainly is a good idea to have instantaneous writes to Floppy disks (and USB drives), because premature ejecting is very common.

Doesn't Udev normally deal with USB sticks?

--Ian

Yes. The aliases are configurable to DOS style drive letters.
Second only to premature joculation (laughing before the joke is finished....) :D
Udev only provides the /dev entry.

Most distros use HAL (in combination with udev) for removable media these days. Slackware doesn't provide HAL. So for me, it is just as easy to use MTools to access USB sticks.