# Floppy disks

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Reason: please use the first argument of the template to provide a brief explanation. (Discuss in Talk:Floppy disks#)

From Wikipedia:

  A floppy disk, also called a diskette, is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).

Common tasks with floppy disks are described bellow, with available tools to accomplish them.

## Installation

### Kernel module

Most of the floppy drives should be supported by stock kernel. The module `floppy` is used as a driver for floppy drives.

The `floppy` module could not be loaded by default. In such case, it could be loaded with the following command:

    $ modprobe floppy

### Packages

There are two packages in the Arch package repository related with floppy disks:

- dosfstools
- mtools.

## Common tasks

Here are the commands needed to perform the most common tasks. In all examples is assumed that `/dev/fd0` is linux device for the floppy drive. By default, all these tasks need to be performed as root.

### Format

    # mkfs.msdos /dev/fd0

### Mount

    # mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

## Troubleshooting

### Unable to get diskette geometry

    $ mkfs.msdos /dev/fd0
    mkfs.msdos 3.0.5 (27 Jul 2009)
    mkfs.msdos: unable to get diskette geometry for '/dev/fd0'

In such case, is probably that the diskette is physically damaged.

## More Resources

- http://www.daniel-baumann.ch/software/dosfstools/ - DOS filesystem utilities (not so verbosely documented IMHO)
- http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/ - a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS disks from Unix without mounting them

## Todo

- floppy(8)
- fdformat(8)
- recovering a "dead" floppy

Categories:

- Storage
- File systems

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