Files stored on "A" disks from Linux won't show up as existing on Win. File Manager

jenifer_e_church · 03-09-2006, 07:14 PM

I've been saving my html files on floppy disks because I don't have internet at home, but when I try to read the disks on a Windows computer, it doesn't even read the disk. It asks me if I want to format it. It does this no matter the file extension. What am I doing wrong?

~Jenifer

J.W. · 03-09-2006, 07:22 PM

Welcome to LQ. I'll assume that you've formatted your floppy disks using a Linux file system (such as ext2, ext2, reiserfs, and so forth) which Windows unfortunately cannot recognize. If you format the floppy using FAT32, you should be able to read/write equally well under either Windows or Linux

jiml8 · 03-09-2006, 07:25 PM

In linux, the floppy won't be known as the "A" drive. Commonly it will be /mnt/floppy or /mnt/fd0.

Your floppy will have a file system on it. For windows to read it, the file system has to be the FAT file system, but if you formatted it in Linux it could be that Linux formatted it with EXT2 or EXT3. Windows will not natively read this.

You can either reformat the floppies using FAT (which Linux can read/write) or you can obtain the EXT2 file system for Windows from here:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

IBall · 03-09-2006, 07:39 PM

Did you umount the floppy before removing it from the drive?
When you put it in, you probably needed to type "mount /mnt/floppy". Before removing it, you need to type "umount /mnt/floppy", otherwise the files may not be copyed to the disk, and you will use your files. This is similar to "Safely remove hardware" for USB drives in Windows.

I hope this helps
--Ian

jenifer_e_church · 03-21-2006, 05:26 PM

The only filing systems listed were DOS and KDE. I'm running Simply Mepis, if that helps.