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Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

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Re: Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

#2

Post by jmclnx »

One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect switch.

Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs.

FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would have been nice :)

Re: Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

#3

Post by torgoguys »

jmclnx wrote: post #2

One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect switch. Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs. FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would have been nice :)

Using an SD card (or micro SD in an adapter) connected to a USB reader might meet your needs. You can then use the SD write protect switch.

Re: Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

#4

Post by c22 »

jmclnx wrote: post #2

One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect switch. Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs. FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would have been nice :)

You might like: https://www.kanguru.com/products/kanguru-ss3

Re: Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

#6

Post by jhallenworld »

torgoguys wrote: post #3
jmclnx wrote: post #2

One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect switch. Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs. FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would have been nice :)

Using an SD card (or micro SD in an adapter) connected to a USB reader might meet your needs. You can then use the SD write protect switch.

I thing I learned only recently is that the write protect switch on the SD card is not an electrical switch connected to anything in the SD card itself: it just hits a lever in the SD socket that opens a contact closure and it's up to the system (hardware and software both) to bother to look at it. So on many systems the write protect switch doesn't even work.

Re: Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

#7

Post by nticompass »

As a kid (ok, as an adult too), I knew what the "CH" on floppies meant. I was curious, but never asked or tried looking it up.

I forget when, but one day, it dawned on me that it said "HD"!

I guess most of my floppies had their labels on in such a way that the flap/door was facing down, so it said "CH". To read "HD," then the label would be upside down.

Re: Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing

#9

Post by mrob »

jmclnx wrote: post #2

One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect switch. Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs. FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would have been nice :)

With the default ext4 filesystem, mounting 'ro' doesn't actually prevent writes to the disk. For that you need 'noload' too, to prevent journal replay. This can result in a broken filesystem if it wasn't unmounted cleanly, although assuming it's 100% read-only it shouldn't do any permanent damage (perhaps enforce read-only access at the block device level to be sure).
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