Ubuntu Tips: Floppy Drive
If you have been unsuccessfully mounting a floppy disk in Ubuntu 10.10 use this solution to access the data on that diskette.
27th January 2011
It's been quite a while since I have last used a floppy disk. I am sure like many people you have a house or office littered with old diskettes. I have however been unable to successfully mount a floppy disk in Ubuntu 10.10. After a bit of investigation I have reminded myself that it was again impossible to mount floppy disks in Ubuntu 10.04. This was because of an update to the udisks package.
According to the Ubuntu forum those who wished to access floppy disks had to downgrade their version of udisks. However if you are prepared to get your hands dirty and use the terminal you can mount floppy disks without down grading any software.
Mounting the Floppy Disk
You can mount floppy disks with the following command:
udisks --mount /dev/fd0
Once the command has been executed you will see a new floppy disk icon on the desktop and within Nautilus. In this example the floppy disk become available at this path.
cd /media/floppy0
Unmounting the Floppy Disk
Once you have finished with the floppy disk you can unmount the volume in one of the following ways. You can either select unmount by right click the floppy icon, click the eject icon in Nautilus or with the command.
udisks --unmount /dev/fd0
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