I get I/O errors when writing a disk image to a new old-stock floppy in a USB drive. How can I resolve this?

Question

I wish to create a bootable DOS 3.3 installation floppy disk (3.5″, 1.44MB, 2HD, Sony branded) for my AST Premium Exec 386SX/20 laptop.

I have bought a new USB floppy disk drive and connected it to an Ubuntu virtual machine and I'm able to mount the drive and read the contents of the disk (although it takes a long time, over 1 minute just to get the root file listing).

I have attempted to use the following command to overwrite the diskette with an image file "Dos3.3.img" from https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/dos.html.

root@ubuntu64:~# dd conv=sync bs=512 if=/root/386_stuff/Dos3.3.img of=/dev/sdb ; sync
dd: error writing '/dev/sdb': Input/output error
97+0 records in
96+0 records out
49152 bytes (49 kB, 48 KiB) copied, 18.3361 s, 2.7 kB/s
root@ubuntu64:~#

The image is 1.44MB in size (e.g. a complete disk's worth), but it clearly fails with an IO error after only 96 sectors transferred. I've tried this a few times with different images (a "NEC" brand boot image from some other site had a similar failure though).

I believe the disks are new old-stock, they came shrink wrapped in their original packaging. The USB floppy drive is a generic thing with a TEAC chipset (according to dmesg).

I cannot tell if my method is faulty, or if it's the diskettes or the drive. Is there a better, more robust way to create a bootable DOS 3.3 floppy?

Supplemental: Output from lsusb -v relating to the floppy drive connected to the linux virtual...

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0644:0000 TEAC Corp. Floppy
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x0644 TEAC Corp.
  idProduct          0x0000 Floppy
  bcdDevice            2.00
  iManufacturer           1 TEACV0.0
  iProduct                2 TEACV0.0
  iSerial                 0
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength       0x0027
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0x80
      (Bus Powered)
    MaxPower              500mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           3
      bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage
      bInterfaceSubClass      4 Floppy (UFI)
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 Control/Bulk/Interrupt
      iInterface              0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x82  EP 2 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x01  EP 1 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x83  EP 3 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0002  1x 2 bytes
        bInterval             127
can't get debug descriptor: Resource temporarily unavailable
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)

The output from ufiformat -v -i /dev/sdb...

root@ubuntu64:~/386_stuff/freedos_installation_media/144m# ufiformat -v -i /dev/sdb
inquire on device=/dev/sdb
vendor:  TEAC
product: USB UF000x
write protect: off
media type: 2HD
status      block size   kb
formatted    2880  512 1440
formattable  2400  512 1200
formattable  1232 1024 1232
formattable  2880  512 1440

Answer 1

Your dd command looks valid. There should be nothing wrong with the method you're using.

I'd suggest trying the USB floppy drive in other machines, trying other USB floppy drives, or trying an internal drive instead if at all possible.

Unfortunately, I've had very little luck with USB external drives that were manufactured recently (2019+), myself. On Linux systems they would not work at all, and on Windows 7 they would work for five minutes seemingly perfectly and then show bizarre behaviour like not refreshing the contents of the directory or not reading or writing files yet claiming to have done so, to locking up the system.

---

For completeness, here's a link to Debian's documentation on writing floppy images on Linux, Windows, DOS and other systems.

You can use the following command on a Linux system:

dd if=filename of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 conv=sync ; sync

With the following caveats:

• "You will probably need root access to the system."
• "Some systems attempt to automatically mount a floppy disk when you place it in the drive. You might have to disable this feature before the workstation will allow you to write a floppy in raw mode."

(Some examples use bs=512 as you tried, and optionally add count=2880 to the command (as 512*2880=1474560 is a 1.4Mb floppy image).)

Answer 2

I'm able to mount the drive and read the contents of the disk (although it takes a long time, over 1 minute just to get the root file listing).

That's already an indication that something is wrong. Does the drive make some noise during this? You can usually hear the head moving, and also the typical "head reset" action when the head moves to track 0, and back to the track that had trouble.

dd: error writing '/dev/sdb': Input/output error

So: Has trouble reading, cannot write at least one sector.

I believe the disks are new old-stock, they came shrink wrapped in their original packaging.

First thing I'd try (if you haven't already done this) is to reformat the whole floppy, e.g. with ufiformat (commonly available in the ufiformat package).