External USB Floppy Drives In Linux

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Has anyone here ever successfully gotten an external USB floppy drive to work in Linux? I bought one recently (Sabrent), and while it works in Windows 7, it doesn't seem to want to work in Linux.

 

Ideas? Suggestions?

[securitybreach]

Has anyone here ever successfully gotten an external USB floppy drive to work in Linux? I bought one recently (Sabrent), and while it works in Windows 7, it doesn't seem to want to work in Linux.

 

Ideas? Suggestions?

 

Wow, you actually need the use of a floppy drive? Unfortunately a lot of the really old tech are no longer included in the current kernels. It's a shame as one of the many strong points of running Linux was that could run on old hardware.

[zlim]

I just checked the specs and my 701 eeepc Vender's List says that Mitsumi and IBM brands work. Surprisingly, the one floppy drive I have (we own three and my husband has the other two attached to two of his computers)) is a Mitsumi. I plugged it in, put in a floppy with some Windows Files and I can see the files In the File Manager.

 

My eeepc still has the hybrid Xandros/Debian installed. I didn't do anything.

 

If I have time tomorrow, I'll fire up another distro (I have 5 or 6 newer models on USB sticks) and see if a newer distro can see the files.

 

This looks like what I used

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1PU0FD9579

Edited November 19, 2013 by zlim

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I don't really need it, but the price was right... free. A friend had given this to me a few years back. It had never been taken out of the original package. I can get it to work in Win XP and 7, but it don't want to be recognized in Linux.

 

Oddly enough, I have an external USB ZIP100 drive that works like a champ in Win and Lin. Go figure. I don't really need it either. I have some pics and stuff on ZIP disks, but rarely ever access them.

 

I had an internal floppy and ZIP in my recently deceased ericsbane05 system. They worked well. I was thinking ahead regarding these external USB drives because my next system will be the first that I've ever built with no internal floppy, ZIP, or EIDE devices. The new system will be DVD/SATA and hdd/SATA only.

[Guest LilBambi]

You have looked at dmesg and lspci I would imagine to see if it is even seeing it and get a clue on the driver?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

dmesg is no good because the device is being attached via USB after boot up. And it's lsusb in this case, not lspci.

 

Anyway, lsusb shows the device as a Mitsumi 1.44M floppy drive, so the OS sees the darn thing, anyway. I just can't mount it at all. Terminal says there's nothing to mount. Fdisk does not show the device. It tries. I see the drive light activate, but fdisk just gives up after 30 seconds or so.

 

Yes, there is a blank formatted disk in the machine at the time. I figure that was going to be your next question. Oh, and it doesn't work with a disk that has data on it, either.

 

Myeh... it's not a critical thing, really. If there's something on an old floppy I need to access, I can always check it out in Windows... or outside on ericsshop02, which has an internal floppy on it.

[Guest LilBambi]

dmesg does show when usb devices are connected and disconnected.

 

And yes, lsusb will tell you what is connected, but does it tell you what failed like dmesg does?

[Guest LilBambi]

In Ubuntu someone was able to get a USB floppy drive to automount with the following instructions:

• Add the following line to the /etc/modules file:
  floppy
  
• Enter the following shell commands:
  mkdir /media/floppy
  mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /media/floppy -o uid=1000
  

This will mount the floppy, but I would like this to happen automatically, so when I connect the drive to the USB port, it automatically mounts the floppy.