Hello,

I am trying to mount a USB drive which is partitioned as FAT32 & works well on windows,
but when i try to mount this drive in Linux
it says "unable to find the partition type",
though my linux can read from FAT32 HDD partition.

What does this means?

My USB device is "sda" when i cheked for the partitions I got the following result:

>> fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 130 MB, 130021888 bytes
4 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 248 * 512 = 126976 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 3137645 7740507 570754815+ 72 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(3137644, 3, 11)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(357, 32, 45) logical=(7740506, 0, 51)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 ? 680200 8486766 968014120 65 Novell Netware 386
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(288, 115, 43) logical=(680199, 2, 47)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(367, 114, 50) logical=(8486765, 0, 42)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 ? 7539845 15346410 968014096 79 Unknown
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(366, 32, 33) logical=(7539844, 2, 30)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(357, 32, 43) logical=(15346409, 3, 39)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda4 ? 11635812 11636035 27749+ d Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(372, 97, 50) logical=(11635811, 0, 25)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(0, 10, 0) logical=(11636034, 3, 33)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order


Then I also checked for the supported filesystems and got the following results:

>> cat /proc/filesystems
nodev rootfs
nodev bdev
nodev proc
nodev sockfs
nodev futexfs
nodev tmpfs
nodev shm
nodev pipefs
nodev eventpollfs
ext2
nodev ramfs
minix
iso9660
nodev nfs
nodev devpts
reiserfs
ntfs
nodev usbdevfs
nodev usbfs
vfat

>> cat /etc/filesystems
vfat
hfs
minix
reiserfs
*

How can i possible mount my USB drive?

Any help will be highly appreciated....

Thanks
-Rohan

Are you trying to mount /dev/sda, or /dev/sda1?

Yeah this is a common mistake. Try mounting /dev/sda1...

oneandoneis2,
Thanks for the help

I used the command
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb/

& also tried all the partitions sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4 then also the result is same.

Did you try mounting with the -t vfat parameter?

Thanks anurup,
yes I also tried with -t vfat option but still the response is same.

Ummm...I know these suggestions are going to sound alittle crazy but here goes anyway...

1) Are you sure that sda* is what your usb drive is and not sdb*?

2) Everything failing try reformatting the usb drive through Windows and then trying with Linux again...

yes my usb drive is sda,
I already gave the details in my first post.

And I don't want to format the drive,
I think If there would have been any problem in the formating then how come windows recignizes the format well.

Windows can handle a drive with a lot of errors whereas Linux by its inherent nature seeks perfection! ;-)

Rohan, something like this happened to me once. I could read and write the drive through Windows but Linux just hung even if I plugged the drive in. I even tried repairing the disk through Windows but to no avail.

It is possible that over time your disk has acquired imperfections - which hopefully are not permanent. Hence the suggestion...

Just a thought: What version of the kernel are you using?

I ask, because I had a problem a while ago with my USB drive suddenly becoming unusuable, even though it was detected. The problem was the kernel version I was using had buggy FAT support. Replaced the kernel, and everything worked again.

I am using 2.4.21-99, by SuSE 9.0