Using an external USB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive in Linux
January 17, 2017 6 Comments
Back in 2004 I needed to get some files off my old 3.5″ floppy disks, so I bought an external USB floppy disk drive to use with a laptop running Windows XP. The label on the drive gives the manufacturer and model as ‘SmartDisk: FDUSB-TM2, Mitsumi Model #: D353FUE’.
Anyway, today I wanted to throw out some 720KB DD (Double Density) and 1440KB HD (High Density) 3.5″ floppy disks but first needed to check their contents and wipe them. So I dug out the SmartDisk USB drive to see if it would work with the current Gentoo Linux installation on my newest laptop. I was pleased to discover that it does, and below are some notes on how to use it in case anyone else needs to use one of these devices.
Once plugged in to a USB port on my laptop, the lsusb command shows the device has been recognised:
Bus 001 Device 013: ID 03ee:6901 Mitsumi SmartDisk FDD
Note that the Linux floppy driver is not needed for USB floppy disk drives:
root # grep -i CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD is not set
A Linux utility named ufiformat is used to low-level format floppy disks in USB floppy disk drives. A Gentoo Linux ebuild for Version 0.9.9 of ufiformat is listed below, and it can be used in a local overlay under the category sys-fs:
# Copyright 1999-2014 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $
EAPI=5
DESCRIPTION="USB Floppy Disk formatting tool"
HOMEPAGE="http://www.geocities.jp/tedi_world/format_usbfdd_e.html"
SRC_URI="http://www.geocities.jp/tedi_world/${P}.tar.gz"
LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86"
IUSE=""
RDEPEND="sys-fs/e2fsprogs"
DEPEND=${RDEPEND}
UPDATE (2 November 2019): As of March 31, 2019, Yahoo! Geocities service has been discontinued, so the ufiformat repository has been moved to GitHub. I have updated the link in the paragraph above accordingly. Therefore, in the ebuild the HOMEPAGE and SRC_URI variables need to be changed – see the update at the end of this blog post.
The ufiformat utility is straightforward to use:
root # ufiformat --help
Usage: ufiformat [OPTION]... [DEVICE]
Format a floppy disk in a USB floppy disk DEVICE.
-f, --format [SIZE] specify format capacity SIZE in KB
without -f option, the format of the current media will be used
-V, --verify verify the medium after formatting
-F, --force do not perform any safety checks
-i, --inquire show device information, instead of performing format
without DEVICE argument, list USB floppy disk devices
-v, --verbose show detailed output
-q, --quiet suppress minor output
-h, --help show this message
To find the device name, use the blkid command before plugging in the USB cable and again after plugging in the USB cable. The extra device listed the second time will be the floppy disk drive. For example, in my case the new line at the end of the blkid output indicated the drive was /dev/sdd:
/dev/sdd: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="BBBA-37AF" TYPE="vfat"
The fdisk command will confirm that the device is the floppy drive:
root # fdisk -l /dev/sdd
Disk /dev/sdd: 720 KiB, 737280 bytes, 1440 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Note that /dev/sdd will not be listed in the output of blkid if there is no disk in the floppy drive, although the ls command will list /dev/sdd while the drive is connected to the computer.
Notice that there are no devices /dev/fd0, /dev/fd1, /dev/fd2 and /dev/fd3, etc. This does not matter.
root # ls /dev
audio1 dri i2c-10 kmem mapper nvidiactl sda1 sequencer2 tty0 tty2 tty30 tty41 tty52 tty63 usbmon3 vcs2 vcsa12
autofs dsp1 i2c-11 kmsg mcelog nvram sda2 sg0 tty1 tty20 tty31 tty42 tty53 tty7 usbmon4 vcs3 vcsa2
block fb0 i2c-2 log mem pktcdvd sda3 sg1 tty10 tty21 tty32 tty43 tty54 tty8 v4l vcs4 vcsa3
bsg fd i2c-3 loop-control memory_bandwidth port sda5 sg2 tty11 tty22 tty33 tty44 tty55 tty9 vboxdrv vcs5 vcsa4
bus full i2c-4 loop0 mixer ptmx sda6 sg3 tty12 tty23 tty34 tty45 tty56 ttyS0 vboxdrvu vcs6 vcsa5
char fuse i2c-5 loop1 mixer1 pts sda7 shm tty13 tty24 tty35 tty46 tty57 ttyS1 vboxnetctl vcs7 vcsa6
console hidraw0 i2c-6 loop2 mqueue random sdb snapshot tty14 tty25 tty36 tty47 tty58 ttyS2 vboxusb vcs8 vcsa7
core hidraw1 i2c-7 loop3 network_latency rfkill sdb1 snd tty15 tty26 tty37 tty48 tty59 ttyS3 vcs vcs9 vcsa8
cpu hidraw2 i2c-8 loop4 network_throughput root sdc stderr tty16 tty27 tty38 tty49 tty6 urandom vcs1 vcsa vcsa9
cpu_dma_latency hpet i2c-9 loop5 null rtc sdc1 stdin tty17 tty28 tty39 tty5 tty60 usbmon0 vcs10 vcsa1 vga_arbiter
cuse i2c-0 initctl loop6 nvidia-modeset rtc0 sdd stdout tty18 tty29 tty4 tty50 tty61 usbmon1 vcs11 vcsa10 video0
disk i2c-1 input loop7 nvidia0 sda sequencer tty tty19 tty3 tty40 tty51 tty62 usbmon2 vcs12 vcsa11 zero
root # ls -la /dev/fd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jan 17 02:13 /dev/fd -> /proc/self/fd
root # ls -la /proc/self/fd
total 0
dr-x------ 2 root root 0 Jan 17 04:26 .
dr-xr-xr-x 8 root root 0 Jan 17 04:26 ..
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Jan 17 04:26 0 -> /dev/pts/1
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Jan 17 04:26 1 -> /dev/pts/1
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Jan 17 04:26 2 -> /dev/pts/1
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Jan 17 04:26 3 -> /proc/17669/fd
To format an HD floppy disk with the FAT file system, I did the following:
root # ufiformat -f 1440 /dev/sdd
geometry: track=80, head=2, sector=18, block=512
done
root # /usr/sbin/mkfs.vfat /dev/sdd
mkfs.fat 4.0 (2016-05-06)
attribute "partition" not found
root # ufiformat -i /dev/sdd
vendor: MITSUMI
product: USB FDD
write protect: off
media type: 2HD
status block size kb
formatted 2880 512 1440
formattable 2880 512 1440
formattable 1232 1024 1232
formattable 2400 512 1200
To format a DD floppy disk with the FAT file system, I did the following:
root # ufiformat -f 720 /dev/sdd
geometry: track=80, head=2, sector=9, block=512
done
root # /usr/sbin/mkfs.vfat /dev/sdd
mkfs.fat 4.0 (2016-05-06)
attribute "partition" not found
root # ufiformat -i /dev/sdd
vendor: MITSUMI
product: USB FDD
write protect: off
media type: 2DD
status block size kb
formatted 1440 512 720
formattable 1440 512 720
I use the KDE Desktop Environment. The Device Notifier widget in the System Tray shows the drive and — once a formatted floppy disk is in the drive — it is possible to use the Device Notifier to mount, open and unmount the floppy disk. However, it is also possible to use the command line:
root # mkdir /mnt/floppy
root # mount /dev/sdd /mnt/floppy
root # ls /mnt/floppy
root # cp /test.txt /mnt/floppy/
root # ls /mnt/floppy
test.txt
root # umount /dev/sdd
Earlier in this post I showed examples of formatting floppy disks using the FAT file system, but it is of course possible to format them using other file systems, such as:
root # mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdd
mke2fs 1.43.3 (04-Sep-2016)
/dev/sdd contains a vfat file system
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Creating filesystem with 720 1k blocks and 96 inodes
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
Anyway, I was able to check the contents of the floppies and wipe them before disposing of them. It’s good to know that some old technologies can still be used when needs be. I won’t be throwing out the old floppy disk drive just yet.
UPDATE (2 November 2019): As of March 31, 2019, Yahoo! Geocities service has been discontinued, so the ufiformat repository has been moved to GitHub. Therefore, in the ebuild the HOMEPAGE and SRC_URI variables need to be changed from:
HOMEPAGE="http://www.geocities.jp/tedi_world/format_usbfdd_e.html"
SRC_URI="http://www.geocities.jp/tedi_world/${P}.tar.gz"
to:
HOMEPAGE="https://github.com/tedigh/ufiformat/"
SRC_URI="https://github.com/tedigh/ufiformat/archive/v0.9.9.zip"
or:
HOMEPAGE="https://github.com/tedigh/ufiformat/"
SRC_URI="https://github.com/tedigh/ufiformat/archive/v{$PV}.zip"
Fitzcarraldo's Blog 