Mounting USB Flash Drives

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Mounting USB Flash Drives
started by: skibum09

Posted by skibum09 on Aug. 24 2008,16:42

I've gotten very frustrated trying to get my flash drive to mount in the hard disk install on an old Gateway 1150 Solo. I've tried plugging it in before i turn the computer on, when it is booting up and after it has booted. How can I get my flash drive mounted and once I do where will I find it in the file browser?

Posted by Juanito on Aug. 24 2008,17:13

After plugging the flash drive in, you can try something like this:

Code Sample

$ dmesg | tail -15

This should give a clue as to where your flash drive has been assigned

Posted by skibum09 on Aug. 24 2008,17:15

Quote (Juanito @ Aug. 24 2008,17:13)

After plugging the flash drive in, you can try something like this:

Code Sample

$ dmesg | tail -15

This should give a clue as to where your flash drive has been assigned

it has to be mounted first, though, right?

Posted by Juanito on Aug. 24 2008,17:19

No - start your machine, plug in the flash drive, open a terminal window and enter the command above. Maybe you can paste the output in this thread.

Posted by skibum09 on Aug. 29 2008,22:21

Quote (Juanito @ Aug. 24 2008,17:19)

No - start your machine, plug in the flash drive, open a terminal window and enter the command above. Maybe you can paste the output in this thread.

Sorry it has taken me awhile to post back...I've been really busy with school, etc. Anyway, here is the output from that command:

<4>sda: Write Protect is off
<6> sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4
<7>WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
<7>USB Mass Storage device found at 2
<6>USB Mass Storage support registered
<6>scsi singledevice 1 0 0 1
<6>scsi singledevice 1 0 0 2
<6>scsi singledevice 1 0 0 3
<6>scsi singledevice 1 0 0 4
<6>scsi singledevice 1 0 0 5
<6>scsi singledevice 1 0 0 6
<4> I/O error: dev 08:01, sector 0
<4> I/O error: dev 08:02, sector 0
<4> I/O error: dev 08:03, sector 0
<4> I/O error: dev 08:04, sector 0

Posted by chaostic on Aug. 29 2008,23:55

Seems like there are 4 partitions on your flash drive (and it might be a cheap/bad drive). What kind of flash drive is it? How does it show up on a windows computer?

Posted by Juanito on Aug. 30 2008,05:56

...and if you did want to mount the four partitions, you could do something like this:

Code Sample

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sda1
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sda2
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sda3
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sda4
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /mnt/sda4

Note that the "vfat" part assumes your partitions are formatted fat, if they are formatted ext2, you would use "ext2" in place of "vfat"

Posted by curaga on Aug. 30 2008,10:35

A classic example of malfunctioning winblows factory formatting. No proper partition table - you mount this as /dev/sda and ignore the partitions.

A better way would be to create a proper partition structure, a single proper partition. This does not make it unreadable under winblows, they aren't stupid enough not to understand a standard.

Posted by skibum09 on Aug. 30 2008,19:27

Quote (chaostic @ Aug. 29 2008,23:55)

Seems like there are 4 partitions on your flash drive (and it might be a cheap/bad drive). What kind of flash drive is it? How does it show up on a windows computer?

It's a PNY 8 gig that shows up as a single 8 gig-ish FAT32 partition in windows