Can't read Floppy Disks

[LeeK]

In order to avoid some of the comments I would otherwise get let me just say that I know floppies are old technology and I know there are better, newer alternatives. The last two computers I built did not have floppy drives but I still have a collection of old floppies in boxes that go back over 25 years. I just built a new computer and decided it would be nice to have a floppy drive again to read all of those old disks and save anything of any value before I throw them out or sell them on ebay.

When I could not get the drive to read after installing Mint I decided to install XP to test it. The drive works just fine under XP and I was not only able to read the drive but I used XP to format a boot disk so that I can boot from the A: drive if I want to. My point here is that the drive itself seems to work. It appears to be installed correctly, the BIOS sees it, and OS's from the corporation that must not be named can read and write from it.

After putting together a system with components that should work just fine with Linux I did a clean install of Mint 9. The floppy drive shows up in Computer. When I right click to “Mount” the floppy the drive light briefly comes on and it makes a click sound but then displays the message “Unable to mount location – no media in the drive”. Choosing “Detect Media” also accesses the drive but does nothing. The system seems to be aware of the floppy or it wouldn't show up but I cant actually get to the disk. This is the same disk I read, and then formated as a boot. Formated and read in this very drive by the way.

I have searched for a couple of days mostly including Ubuntu in the search. I tried all of the suggestions I could find but none of them have worked for me. Most of what I found was older so that may have something to do with it. What may have worked on the mid 2000's may not now apply to Ubuntu 10.04 or Linux Mint 9.

If anyone has a floppy working with either Mint 9 or Ubuntu 10.04 I would really appreciate knowing what to do. I am not very skilled so I need exact steps to follow.

Thanks.

[oobetimer]

Terminal commands

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gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

....add to the list

#floppyDrive
/dev/fd0  /media/floppy0  auto  rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8    0  0

.....save and quit

[LeeK]

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

....add to the list

#floppyDrive
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

.....save and quit

I appreciate the reply, unfortunately I have already done this and it didn't help. The floppy is showing but when I click on it or right click and try to mount it the drive will click and then return the message "Unable to mount location - no media in drive". The disk and drive both work just fine in XP.

[altair4]

As it turn out I have a floppy drive on this box and I can confirm your error. Hadn't used a floppy on this box for a while so I never noticed that it was not functioning properly.

I have a workaround but you may go insane if you have a lot of floppies to examine:

First, this is my fstab entry for the floppy:

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Put a #sign in front of it to disable the line. It's not doing anything anyway.

Then mount each one manually:

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sudo mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0

You'll also have to unmount each one manually since they're mounted as root:

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sudo umount /media/floppy0

I vaguely remember something in the Ubuntu forums about this. Something about the boot process getting hung up probing for a floppy on systems without a floppy drive.... their "fix" was to disable the floppy entirely. I don't remember exactly but if that's true you have to wonder what happened to all the adults over at Ubuntu-land.

[LeeK]

Thank You altair4.

That worked. Most of what I found searching involved editing the fstab and modules files but that never worked. I had the feeling that what worked in the past must not be working anymore. I was even able to read the disk with XP in a virtualbox.

I hope someone out there knows how to improve this solution so that it is possible to right click and mount and unmount. Hand typing this at the command line might drive me insane.

Does anyone know if this is an Ubuntu specific problem or does Linux in general no longer support the reading of DOS floppies? I find it odd that VirtualBox supports the floppy if it is this difficult to use. Once again, I know the floppy is a very old and outdated technology, but I actually had an easier time figuring out how to read my old Atari 8bit 5.25 disks.

Is there another (current) distribution that works with floppies a little easier?

Thanks again.

[oobetimer]

Thank You altair4.

That worked. Most of what I found searching involved editing the fstab and modules files but that never worked. I had the feeling that what worked in the past must not be working anymore. I was even able to read the disk with XP in a virtualbox.

I hope someone out there knows how to improve this solution so that it is possible to right click and mount and unmount. Hand typing this at the command line might drive me insane.

Does anyone know if this is an Ubuntu specific problem or does Linux in general no longer support the reading of DOS floppies? I find it odd that VirtualBox supports the floppy if it is this difficult to use. Once again, I know the floppy is a very old and outdated technology, but I actually had an easier time figuring out how to read my old Atari 8bit 5.25 disks.

Is there another (current) distribution that works with floppies a little easier?

Thanks again.

Floppies work fine with Ubuntu, and Mandriva is even better with floppies. If there is some mess in the fstab, so easy way for using floppies does not work.

[tgp1994]

I cannot believe this.

I've been pulling my hair out for half a day, trying to figure out why I could do anything to the floppy (hexedit it, format it, etc.) from Mint, but not mount it! Then I happened to stumble across this, and it turns out that line in fstab was screwing with it the entire time. How stupid.

[genogebot]

It's not an ideal solution, but I've discovered that I can access the floppy drive from a Windows virtual machine (and I suppose other operating systems would also work, such as DOS or an older version of linux before floppy support was disabled) in VMWare player - I assume a VirtualBox virtual machine would also work.

[tgp1994]

It's not an ideal solution, but I've discovered that I can access the floppy drive from a Windows virtual machine (and I suppose other operating systems would also work, such as DOS or an older version of linux before floppy support was disabled) in VMWare player - I assume a VirtualBox virtual machine would also work.

That's funny, because my native windows machine was having no trouble, and I was emulating Mint through VMware. So I guess we know it's something with Mint.

[zandoval]

I have a workaround but you may go insane if you have a lot of floppies...

I know this is an old post - I just made a couple of Terminal launchers with the commands - I don't do many floppy's so its not a problem...

Right Click on desktop
Create Launcher - Application in Terminal - Name = MntFd0 - Command = sudo mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 - OK

Right Click on Desktop
Create Launcher - Application in Terminal - Name = UnMntFd0 - Command = sudo umount /media/floppy0 - OK

[altair4]

From: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=59635

Create a Menu item that you can use to mount the floppy:

[1] Look at your /etc/fstab and make sure your floppy line looks something like this just to make sure we get the device name correctly:

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

[2] Add an entry to the Menu:

Right Click "Menu"
Select "Edit Menu"
In the "Menus" column select "Accessories" then "New Item"
In the Command box, enter:

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udisks --mount /dev/fd0

In the Name box enter:

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Mount Floppy 

Since it's arranged alphabetically you could even use A Mount Floppy

Note: You may need to right click Menu > "Reload Plugins" for the addition to take affect.

Insert a floppy and select "Mount Floppy". A mount icon will appear on your desktop which can be used to unmount the floppy before removal.

[roadcone]

I have the same problem trying to mount a linux-formatted (ext3 I think) hard drive from a Raid 1 back-up pair from a storage center. "Unable to mount location Can't mount file". I'm trying to access some files on the disk. The disk is connected via the USB port and can be seen by various utilities by device name, make, model type, but can't be listed.

Can the same technique be used for this disk? If so, can some kind soul provide the amended script and will the script modify the hard disk itself in any way?

Thank you.

[tgp1994]

You'll want to make your own topic, not many people will be looking in a dead topic, let alone one about floppies