can't see flash drive
 

Hi
I bought my first flash drive today (a ScanDisk Cruzer Micro 2Gb), but when I plug it in I can't see it. I've read that I should see it listed in /dev also, but nothing is there. There is nothing on the desktop either.

I am running Mandrake 10.0, so I would think that I would be able to see this kind of drive.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

you wouldnt see it as flash drive or something like that. it would probably be /dev/sda. once you find it in /dev you will have to mount it. mount /dev/sda /mnt/sda. That should let you use your drive. later you might want to add /dev/sda/ to fstab

Have you attempted to mount the USB drive? Commonly (but not always, the USB thumb drive wil be identified by the system as /dev/sda1)

To unmount the device prior to removal, try

Happy Hunting

There is nothing in /dev called sda or sda1

I tried to mount per the post by kvedaa but I got a message that said
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Well, two things come to mind at the moment. The first is that your system simply has identified the drive as some other device name. Another possiblity is that the system is simply not seeing the USB drive.

When you first plug in the drive, does the activity light on the drive light up at all?

are we sure that your flash drive works with linux. Some arent formatted correctly and you would need to reformat it as a fat32 probably.

In response to kvedaa
Yes the activity light comes on for a few seconds and then goes out

tanoneya - the drives paperwork says that it supports Linux

Run dmesg, that should tell you which /dev node it has been attached to.

ok...i tried the dmesg....

lots of stuff flashed by, but what may be useful is that towards the end of the process I got this:

usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 2
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 2, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 3
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 3, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 4
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 4, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 5
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 5, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 6
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 6, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 7
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 7, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 8
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 8, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 9
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 9, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 10
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 10, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 11
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 11, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 12
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 12, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 13
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 13, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 14
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 14, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 15
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 15, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 16
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 16, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 17
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 17, error -71

Does that help narrow it down?

Edit: yes, I should have said that what you wanted was the end of the dmesg output :).

Google hasn't helped much with this, unfortunately. Maybe try another USB port? Hopefully someone will be able to shed some light on this :(.

I have 2 USB 2.0 ports, and I tried them both with no results....

It appears that this problem is not rare, I see several references to it both here at linuxquestions as well as on other internet sites. But I am not finding much for sucess. If I find anything that looks like it might be valueable I will let you know.

thanks...I appreciate your help on this

If your flash drive is the sort that has a secure partition and a public partition, you'll probably need to collapse them to a single partition. The vendor may have a tool for this, or I expect a Windows partition editor would do. See for instance the Patriot Memory website.

i have a similar 1gb drive and if i am correct it has U3 launchpad on it. THis might be giving the system some trouble and it is annoying anyways and removal may help. If you can find a windows system you can get it off.