Using Zip, Floppy, USB, and CDs in linux

To access removable media, Linux needs to be told when it is available. Letting Linux know that a drive is available is called "mounting" the drive. Because disk accesses are slow, Linux often delays copying, reading, or writing to a disk for a more convenient time. It lets the user proceed with other tasks while these slow operations are performed in the background. Because Linux might have tasks yet to be completed, it needs to be warned before you remove a disk from a drive. Telling Linux to finish using the drive so that you can remove a disk is called "unmounting".

To make this easier the different versions of X-windows, such as Gnome, KDE, etc... , have built in functions to mount and unmount drives. Unfortunately, each one is different. I will try to cover the most common situations below.

How to mount and unmount disks

Note About USB Drives

There are many different types of USB Key Drives. Most of them use the same protocol for communicating and generally should work on our machines. There are some that don't. If your drive does not work, DO NOT bring us a driver. We are not providing additional support for these drives. If it works, great; if not, too bad.

Mounting/Unmounting from the command line

To mount a drive:

  1. Insert your disk. (Zip, floppy, USB key drive, or CD)

  2. Open a terminal (i.e. a console, a shell, or a command line, etc).

  3. All removable devices are found in /mnt/(device name)

    CD ROM: /mnt/cdrom
    Floppy: /mnt/floppy
    Zip Disk: /mnt/zip (On many systems /mnt/zip is /mnt/zip100.0 or /mnt/zip250.0)
    USB Key: /mnt/usbcard1, /mnt/usbcard2, /mnt/usbcard3, /mnt/usbcard4

  4. Tell Linux to mount the drive by typing one of the following commands:

    CD ROM: mount /mnt/cdrom
    Floppy: mount /mnt/floppy
    Zip Disk: mount /mnt/zip
    USB Key: mount /mnt/usbcard1

    If that doesn't work try: mount /mnt/usbcard2, mount /mnt/usbcard3, mount /mnt/usbcard4 You should now be able to access your disk by going to the directory listed above.

To unmount a drive:

  1. Open a terminal.

  2. Tell Linux to unmount the drive. Note the missing N; thus it is umount, not unmount.

    CD ROM: umount /mnt/cdrom
    Floppy: umount /mnt/floppy
    Zip Disk: umount /mnt/zip
    USB Key: umount /mnt/usbcard

  3. Give Linux a moment to finish any reads or writes it still needs to make to the drive. You should now be able to eject your disk. If you are not able to, contact your System Administrators.

mount-console.jpg

Mounting/Unmounting from KDE

To add a drive to your desktop please look at the KDE Desktop Configuration doc.

To mount a drive:

  1. Insert your disk.
  2. Right-click on the icon representing your disk in the upper-left hand corner of the screen.
  3. Scroll down and click on the 'mount' option.
  4. You should now be able to access your files by double-clicking on that same icon.

To unmount a drive:

  1. Right-click on the icon representing your disk.
  2. Scroll down and click on the 'unmount' option.
  3. You should now be able to eject your disk.
mount-kde.jpg

Mounting/Unmounting from Gnome

To mount a drive:

  1. Insert your disk.
  2. Right-click anywhere on the desktop background (not on any application).
  3. Scroll down to the disks option.
  4. Scroll right and down to click on your type of disk (on our systems use Zip, not zip250.0).
  5. Your disk will now appear on the desktop as an icon. You can access your files by double-clicking on the icon.

To unmount a drive:

  1. Right-click on your disk's icon.
  2. Scroll down and select the 'unmount' option.
  3. You should now be able to remove your disk.

If your disk is currently busy (the light is on) you might receive a "Can't unmount device" error. Simply wait until your disk is no longer active and try to unmount it again.

mount-gnome.jpg