This must be the most basic of questions, yet we get them in our mail from time to time. Before we proceed however, we'd like to address the issue that some disks may not be of any specific filesystem type. A filesystem is a way in which the computer stores files on media, be they floppy drives or hard disk. We shall address two basic different filesystem types here, i.e. that of DOS and then, Linux. The DOS filesystem types are called msdos type partitions. Linux types are generally ext2 type. Windows 95 filesystems generally come under vfat.
A little understanding of the Linux system is in order here. In Linux, there are no such things as A: Drive, C: Drive and so on. It appears to the users on a single layer, i.e. all files, directories, start from the root i.e. / directory.
Hard Disks, Floppy Drives, CD ROMs appear to the users as part of the filesystem under a directory. Different Distributions adopt different standard locations. For Redhat it is /mnt/floppy.... i.e. the contents of a Floppy Disk will appear under /mnt/floppy directory. For Hard Disks, it may be /mnt/disk1 and so on (dependent on how you name these devices when you install the system).
Before you can read a diskette however, you have to mount the diskette. This is done by issuing the command:
[root@localhost /]# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
or
[root@localhost /]# mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
This command should generally work for Linux diskettes.
For DOS diskettes, you should issue the command
[root@localhost /]# mount -t
msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
or
[root@localhost /]# mount -t vfat dev/fd0
/mnt/floppy
Do take note however, that there may be instances where
a floppy diskette is in tar format, as mentioned above, without any filesystem
as such. You will have to use the tar command to extract files from
such diskettes