unable to mount floppy drive

**ryanvade** · 05-24-2012, 05:47 AM

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

**klaus2008** · 05-24-2012, 07:27 AM

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.

**klaus2008** · 05-24-2012, 10:01 AM

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.

**ryanvade** · 05-24-2012, 07:11 PM

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

**ryanvade** · 05-24-2012, 07:21 PM

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

**Werner P. Schulz** · 05-25-2012, 08:29 AM

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.

**ryanvade** · 05-31-2012, 05:31 AM

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