Mounting Floppy Disks and Removable Media

In order to read floppy disks and other removable media, you need to mount the device. Linux usually adds the proper settings to /etc/fstab and default mount points to the /mnt directory.

The defaul mount points are straightforward; for example, floppy are mounted on /mnt/floppy, CD's are mounted on /mnt/cdrom. You can do this using the following command:

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

the -t switch specifies the type of filesystem(vfat). The device file /dev/fd0 represents the first floppy drive; /mnt/floppy is the directory through which you can access the files after mounting.


If you take a look at your /etc/fstab entry and you will see something like the ff:

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0



This /etc/fstab line sets the default configuration for he first floppy drive (/dev/fd0). The ormat is auto which means that the mount command searches the filesystems and so all you need to mount the floppy is he following command:

#mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy



Similarly, the device for your CD-ROM is normally /dev/cdrom. To mount an ISO9660 CD-ROM, run he command:

#mount -rt iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Now you can read he contents of /mnt/cdrom or /mnt/floppy as if it were a normal filesystem on your system. You don't have to use /mnt/floppy or /mnt/cdrom directories rather you can use any available empty directory of your choice.


You can add the cd-rom entry on your /etc/fstab config file just like this:

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

Asyou can see, iso9660 is already specified as the default CD filesystem and CD's are mounted as read-only(ro) by default. Therefore, all you need to command in mounting the CD is either one of the following:

#mount /mnt/cdrom
#mount /dev/cdrom

To unmount floppy or cdrom, use the umount command:

#umount /mnt/floppy
#umount /mnt/cdrom

Take note that it is imprtant to unmount floppy disk before removing them. Otherwise, you may lose the data which might still be in he cache.