Update: I ran

[root@oxygen ~]# rmmod ehci_hcd

and now I'm getting this (when I try to mount it):
Mar 30 18:09:10 oxygen kernel: usb 5-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
Mar 30 18:09:10 oxygen kernel: scsi15 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: Vendor: .l.l.l.l Model: .l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l Rev: 0811
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: SCSI device sda: 778841708 512-byte hdwr sectors (398767 MB)
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: SCSI device sda: 778841708 512-byte hdwr sectors (398767 MB)
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: sda: unknown partition table
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen kernel: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi15, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Mar 30 18:09:15 oxygen scsi.agent[24369]: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.3/usb5/5-2/5-2:1.0/host15/target15:0:0/15:0:0:0
Mar 30 18:09:31 oxygen kernel: FAT: invalid media value (0xc2)
Mar 30 18:09:31 oxygen kernel: VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.
Mar 30 18:10:58 oxygen kernel: VFS: Can't find an ext2 filesystem on dev sda.
Mar 30 18:11:04 oxygen kernel: VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev sda.

@ coontie: I don't know why you did rmmod ehci_hcd, to me it looked like your drive was being spotted so you should be able to 'mount -t auto /dev/sda /mnt/whatever' (make sure /mnt/whatever exists before you try)

@J_K9: The drive will not (I think) be mounted until you explicitly issue the command to do it, but maybe Fedora has some auto mounting thingy so ymmv.

I was hoping 'tail' would produce a line like this from coontie's post:
once I saw a line like that on my machine I knew that the drive was at 'sda' and then I could mount it.

Sorry I can't help more, I am fishing in the dark here. I don't understand all the SCSI stuff, I don't think I have got messages like those from messing with USB stuff but I could be (probaly) wrong.

Thanks for all your help chefmark, but is there nothing else I can do? Can't I try the rmmod thing (even though I'm not sure what it does) and see if it works then? I really need to get this working. Oh, and a bit of a sidetracked question: does Ubuntu use .rpms?

J_K9

Now that your device driver package has been updated. try fdisk -l again to see if the it returns your MSD.

No, "fdisk -l" returns the same results. Any more ideas? Thanks,

J_K9

The rmmod removes a loaded module, so unless a module is known to be stopping something from working I don't think rmmod -ing anything will help.

Why not request a mod to move this thread to the Hardware forum, hopefully one of the (many) gurus there will be able to fix it

Sorry again that I couldn't be more help

mark

i did rmmod ehci because I found a site where this dude is saying that it helped him resolve frequent usb time-out errors while copying large files between fedora and HD.

in fact, as soon as i rmmod'ed the stupid thing, my OTHER (non-maxtor) drive started working fine. Moreover, fedora created a mount point /media/backup, pointing to the /dev/sda1 in /etc/fstab. All i had to do then was mount /media/backup and i could read the drive's files no problem.

This maxtor drive, however, is still a mystery. But I tell ya, nothing happened at all, until i removed that module. I've no idea what it does but in /etc/modules.conf it points to usb something or rather..

Mounting USB devices is working fine for me in FC3. I'm the service manager of a computer store and my main data recovery PC is an FC3 box. I have a USB device that let's me attach any IDE drive I want. The only trouble I have is when the drive I'm trying to mount has an odball partitioning program on it. Like EZ-drive or other drive overlay.

Check your hardware browser to see where the system is putting the drive. Just go to Menu>System Tools>Hardware Browser. When you mount a USB device (or almost any device for that matter) you'll find it in /Media. Hope this helps.

well, there's no menu for me to go to since i run enlightenment and all my menus are custom.

but anyway. The drive that works, indeed goes under /media/backup. It is the drive that DOESN"T work that goes nowhere.

That would pose a small problem In that case just run hwbrowser from a Super User terminal.

leonardh: I tried the hardware browser, but it just said that "it might take a long time", so I left it for 2 hours and it still didn't move from that screen! I eventually just cancelled because I don't think it was ever going to finish! Thanks for everyone's help, but are there any more final ideas floating around there?

J_K9

Try logging into KDE and run the Hardware Browser from there (make sure the drive is plugged in of course ). It really should tell you what device it's installing the drive on.

Okay, I used Hardware Browser (after booting the system with the external hard drive plugged in) and I clicked on "USB devices".

Under "Selected Device", it said: "VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Then beneath that, under "Device Information" there were two more things:
"Manufacturer - Unknown"
"Driver - uhci-hcd"

I'm not really sure what to do now. I have sent a mod an email (can't PM because I don't suscribe) but I don't think the thread has been moved yet... Anyway, please keep the help coming! Thanks

J_K9

Actually your not looking for the USB devices...sorry about that. You want to look in the hard drive section. That's where it'll give you the physical location of the USB disk.

In "Hard Drives", only /dev/hda shows up with a bunch of other details:

Drive /dev/hda (Geom: 2432/255/63) (Model: HITACHI_DK23CA-20)

And then all the partitions on /dev/hda show up, but the external doesn't show up (it is plugged in btw, lol). Maybe I should log in as root? I'll give it a try.

[EDIT]
Nope, as I thought, no difference whatsoever! So is there anything else I can do, please?
[/EDIT]

J_K9