Need help mounting floppy

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2005-09-24 at 14:52 -0700, Siri Amrit Kaur wrote:
> On Saturday 24 September 2005 02:32 pm Kenneth kindly wrote:
> > I think this eliminates problems with some automounter
> > trying to use the device (in which case I think you
> > would get a message that it could not be opened, or
> > permission denied), and shows the problem is deeper
> > than just whether the floppy has a filesystem on it.
> >
> > Its possible something was left in a confused state
> > from previous attempts.  As much as I hate to
> > recommend rebooting, I would reboot into run level 1,
> > check boot messages for anything regarding floppy, try
> > the dd command again.  If dd says it transfers 360
> > blocks, then at least the driver and hardware are in
> > order.
> 
> Thanks for that suggestion. I did what you said and it would appear 
> the drive is dead. Maybe it's just not connected well. When I have 
> some time I'll shut down, go into the box and have a look around.
----
floppy drives cost $15 and floppy disks cost 25 cents - it long ago
became let's see just how cheap we can make these things in Asia -
quality not being the objective.

Computer cases have air holes and the fans exhausting air typically pull
a percentage of their intake through any opening in the exterior of the
case, floppy drives included but the dust, dirt pet hair, etc. will crap
out pretty much any floppy drive in under 2 years. That's why they
typically don't even include them in most new computers.

If you need floppy drives, go to Fry's, buy new raw disk and box of
floppy disks (the disks that have been sitting on your shelf for 5 years
are probably worthless too). There are better forms of removable media,
USB Zip drives, CD-R, CD-R/W come immediately to mind.

I am finding that CD writers seem to last 2-3 years now too. I bet they
can build them even cheaper.

Beware, the manufacturers have also lowered the quality (and warranties)
on hard drives too.

Craig


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