Mounting and Unmounting in Puppy

When you want to mount a drive (a usb stick or external hardrive along with others). Simply use start-utilities-MUT or start-utilities-Pmount. Or simply type 'mut' or 'pmount' at the commandline (rxvt)

::'Q: MToolsFM'

In the "File managers" menu, Puppy has "ROX Filer file manager", "MToolsFM file manager", and "Mount/unmount drives". I understand with Linux that I need to "mount" a partition before it can be used, but MToolsFM does not have this requirement. Can you please clarify this?

'A:' Traditionally, yes, you have to mount a partition. So, if you plug in a USB Flash card or a floppy disk, you must first run "Mount/unmount drives" to mount it. Then you can use ROX Filer to browse in the mounted partition.

However, MToolsFM accesses drives directly, without them needing to be mounted. So, plug in a USB Flash card or floppy disk, run MToolsFM, and there it is. No need to unmount it later either.

MToolsFM does have one disadvantage though; it can only access unmounted media formatted with the msdos/vfat filesystem. Well, that's what they are anyway, when you purchase them, and when you use them with Windows. So, this is not a problem.

Puppy does not have "hot plugging", that is, auto-mounting of removable drives when they are plugged in, but so what? With MToolsFM you don't need it.

MToolsFM automatically configures to recognise drive A: as being your floppy drive, drive B: as being either a USB flash/memory drive or a IDE Zip drive, and drive C: as being a hard drive vfat partition. Only if these exist, that is.

---

CategoryHowto