I have a usb drive and a Toshiba Satellite L655-S5150. I run Ubuntu on it. My USB drive works fine in every port while running Ubuntu. I boot off of a Damn Small Linux CD and DSL comes up fine, well except for the wifi but that's a different issue. Anyway, no matter which USB port I put my drive into, DSL doesn't see it. Again, the USB drive works perfectly under Ubuntu.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm trying to get the USB to work so I can load DSL onto the USB. I'm looking for a super light Unix distro that I can run off my USB. I've tried Puppy. It works (including the USB) but there is not login security so I don't want to carry around a stick that anyone can plug in and get direct access to my files. If anyone has a suggestion for a light distro that would be appreciated too.

Welcome to the forums! What is your level of Linux knowledge? Do you know about mount command? (man mount) DSL does not have automatic device mounting like Ubuntu (or automatic much of anything, that is why it is tiny), so you must manually create a mount point and use the mount command.

Ubuntu runs fine from USB and is maybe an easier beginner project; read here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/...tick-on-ubuntu

If you do not set up persistence then all files/settings will be lost on shutdown (you must store them to the "cloud" or to a separate filesystem that is encrypted) and your USB will be totally safe/private.

Well I thought about mounting for a moment then pushed it aside for 2 reasons. First, there is a mount option in the GUI but when I click on it, it gives me options for a floppy but no USB. The second reason is when I put df -h in a terminal, it doesn't list the device and I thought that it was supposed to show regardless of whether it is mounted or not. I'll read up on the mount command and try that again from the terminal although don't I need to know the device name in order to mount it?

As for Ubuntu on USB, that is PAINFULLY slow. I've tried it on 3 different USB drives (16GB for 2 of them and 8GB for the 3rd). Same result, just crawls along. Especially if I need to hit the internet. I also tried Lubuntu and it was slow as a snail too. I don't expect it to be as fast as running off of an HDD but it was just too slow.

Nope, df -h only shows mounted drives. blkid or fdisk -l will show non-mounted partitions. DSL is an obsolete and minimalistic distro that gives you almost nothing by default, so if you're taking the plunge you need to learn these commands cold. Or go for a different distro with easier GUI config tools. (The sites http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ and http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ have suggestions for various distros that can be run from USB.)

You can make a secure USB drive with Puppy, actually. There's an option to have your save files encrypted, which works with whatever media you're saving to.