Flash drive not recognized

Submitted by bctune33 on Sun, 03/27/2005 - 20:30. USB Sticks
Posts: 3

I have a SimpleTech USB thumb drive...512 MB OTi Flash disc...

I cannot seem to get Mepis to recognize the drive.

Also, as a side note, why is it that Linux can see my Windows drive, however Windows cannot see my Linux drive?

Thanks in advance

Re: Flash drive not recognized

Submitted by rkn on Mon, 03/28/2005 - 10:45.
Posts: 49

bctune33 wrote:

I have a SimpleTech USB thumb drive...512 MB OTi Flash disc...

I cannot seem to get Mepis to recognize the drive.

There are some problems with USB devices. They do not always build their devices according to the standards.
Try using fdisk to list the partition table on the device.
As root:
# fdisk -l /dev/sd[a-d]

Here are the results of two different cards in the same card reader:
This particular card always mounts as /dev/sda1:

Disk /dev/sda: 14 MB, 14909440 bytes<br />
2 heads, 32 sectors/track, 455 cylinders<br />
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes<br />
 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System<br />
/dev/sda1               1         455       14531+   1

Another card I have always mounts as /dev/sda:

<br />
Disk /dev/sda: 32 MB, 32112640 bytes<br />
1 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1011 cylinders<br />
Units = cylinders of 62 * 512 = 31744 bytes<br />
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System<br />

Both of these cards work automaticly with UDEV and a new kernel.

bctune33 wrote:

Also, as a side note, why is it that Linux can see my Windows drive, however Windows cannot see my Linux drive?

Thanks in advance

Windows dosen't support the filesystem type (ext2) that Linux uses. Linux supports many filesystem types.

Bob

Thanks for your help. I

Submitted by bctune33 on Mon, 03/28/2005 - 12:30.
Posts: 3

Thanks for your help.

I found that as long as I have the Flash drive in the USB port upon boot, it finds it and mounts perfectly. However if it is not connected when I start up, then I cannot use it.

Re: flashdrive not recognized

Submitted by GreyGeek on Sun, 05/22/2005 - 20:49.
Posts: 519

On my Gateway M675 laptop, when I insert a SanDisk Cruzer mini 1GB flashdrive into a USB port SM-3.3 doesn't recognize it (But an identical laptop that is 14 months older does). I used "dmesg | grep "SCSI" device"" to determine which sd device was used. Then I tried
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
but it wouldn't work. The device wasn't recognized.
Then I used
fdisk -l /dev/sda
and after that I repeated the mount command.
It worked!

--
GreyGeek

Re:flash drive not recognized

Submitted by GreyGeek on Mon, 05/23/2005 - 09:12.
Posts: 519

I was having problems with my Gateway m675 laptop running SM-3.3 not recognizing my Sundisk Cruzer mini 1GB flashdrive. Even trying the mount command resulted in the msg "device not found", or some such thing.

I tried using fdisk, as Bob suggested, and fdisk displayed the flashcard configuration. On a lark I retried the mount command and it worked! Just using fdisk made the device visible to the mount command.
Strange. ???
--
GreyGeek

Windows and Linux

Submitted by aysiu on Mon, 05/23/2005 - 10:04.
Posts: 232

Quote:

Also, as a side note, why is it that Linux can see my Windows drive, however Windows cannot see my Linux drive?

Windows dosen't support the filesystem type (ext2) that Linux uses. Linux supports many filesystem types.

It's a little more than that. Windows doesn't feel the need to support ext3. Why would it want its users to acknowledge a Linux partition? Linux, on the other hands, realizes most of its users come from Windows and may be dual-booting, and thus recognizes Windows as a courtesy. Linux doesn't exactly "support" NTFS, but it recognizes it.

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