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Thread: unable to mount floppy drive

  1. #1
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    Exclamation unable to mount floppy drive

    I just got a set of floppy disks for my computer. i know they are old tech but I love to use them. i went to computer in file viewer and clicked on the floppy drive. It said it was a mount point and asked what program I wanted to open it with. I thought the floppy's I bought were per-formatted. I don;t know what it is asking me to do. Should I try to reformat them? I can't even find the floppy drive in fstab. And I can't manually mount it with mount in a terminal. I'm using knoppix 6.7.1 on an old HP pavilion 513W

  2. #2
    Senior Member registered user
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    Open a terminal, insert a floppy disk with some files on it and issue the command
    Code:
    hwinfo --floppy
    This will give you information about the mount device name of you floppy disk drive. In my case I use a USB floppy disk drive connected to an old HP Omnibook and get the device name /dev/sdb.

    Then open a PCMan file manager. Do not select My computer from the menu, but click on the proper device in the left pane of the file manager. In my case I have to click on sdb.

    Before you remove the floppy disk right click on the device in the left pane of the file manager and unmount the disk.

    I hope that helps.

  3. #3
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    It seems that mounting and unmouting of floppy disks cannot be done with the PCMan file manager if your floppy disk drive is not a USB device but a conventional one.

    You could try the following.

    Open a terminal. Insert a floppy disk with some files on it into your floppy disk drive. Create a mount point, load the appropriate kernel module and mount your floppy disk.
    Code:
    sudo mkdir /media/fd0
    sudo modprobe floppy
    sudo mount -o uid=1000,gid=1000 /dev/fd0 /media/fd0
    Open a file manager and navigate to the directory /media/fd0. You should see the files on your floppy disk.

    Before you remove your floppy disk you should close the file manager and issue the command
    Code:
    sudo umount /media/fd0
    in a terminal.

  4. #4
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    The problems is that all my floppys are file free... will try the suggestions anyway.

  5. #5
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    hwinfo --floppy didn't give me anything.
    second idea worked until I try to unmount, it says /media/fd0 isn't mounted

  6. #6
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    Which kind of floppy drive do you have - USB drive or a intern drive with floppy data cable? If intern drive,does BIOS recognize and/or support floppy disk and what kind of floppy disk? While booting do you see light of the drive-LED?

    If you have very old floppy disks the preformat may be damaged; therefore Knoppix cannot mount the disk. Try to new format a floppy disk.

  7. #7
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    I reformated, setup the fstab file and everything seems to be working fine now. just one more question, how can i tell if the files are on the floppy without another floppy enabled computer?

    internal floppy, BIOS recognises it. 3.5 MF2HD 1.44 MB formatted for IBM ps/2 and compatible disks

  8. #8
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    well never mind my last post, same problems as before. any ideas?

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