How to Mount a Floppy Disc on Ubuntu

A floppy disc is a storage media that uses magnetic media contained in a plastic shell. This type of media has been replaced by CDs, DVDs and USB drives which can hold more data. There are some legacy computers that still have floppy drives. The Ubuntu Linux operating system uses the "mount" command to access the contents of a floppy disc. Once mounted, the contents of the disc can be viewed or modified by accessing a directory on the computer.

Instructions

1. Click on the "Applications" menu at the top of the screen.

2. Click on the "Accessories" submenu from the list of choices in the dropdown menu.

3. Choose the "Terminal" program to open a terminal window.

4. Insert the floppy disc into the floppy drive of your computer.

5. Type the command "df" to determine the device name of your floppy drive. The device name for each disc will be shown as the first entry in each line. The floppy drive will have a device name similar to "/dev/fd0."

6. Type the command "sudo mkdir /media/floppy" to create a mount point for the floppy disc. This is the directory where you will access the data contained on the floppy drive. You can change "/media/floppy" to any location that you prefer.

7. Type the command "sudo mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy -vfat" to mount the floppy drive as a FAT32 (Windows) filesystem. If the floppy contains an ext3 (Linux) filesystem, remove the "-vfat" option. Replace "/dev/fd0" with the device name for the floppy drive that you found in step 5. Replace "/media/floppy" with the directory you created in step 4.

References

• Ubuntu Documentation: Mount
• Linux Man Page: mount

Resources

• Ubuntu: Homepage