LinuxQuestions.org - Struggling with a USB pen drive

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Struggling with a USB pen drive

Hey all,
Im strugglin with a USB pen drive. IM trying to access it. y aknow, put files on there etc, but i cant

fdisk -l gives me this

Device
/dev/hda1
/dev/hda2
/dev/hda5

and thats it. The Pen Drive is plugged in, an ive started Hotplug, but its not helping find it. i just wanna mount the pendrive and begin using it.

Any ideas???
any help will be much appreciated. thanks

Which distribution is this?

Right after plugging in the device, run 'dmesg', look for some mention of a USB device and see what '/dev' device it gives you.

Example, my USB card reader with a 32MB Compact Flash Card:

Code:

Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage

USB Mass Storage support registered.

usb-storage: device found at 4

usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

  Vendor: OTi      Model: CF CARD Reader    Rev: 2.00

  Type:  Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00

usb-storage: device scan complete

Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

SCSI device sda: 63488 512-byte hdwr sectors (33 MB)

sda: Write Protect is off

sda: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00

sda: assuming drive cache: write through

SCSI device sda: 63488 512-byte hdwr sectors (33 MB)

sda: Write Protect is off

sda: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00

sda: assuming drive cache: write through

 sda: sda1



[root@charon ~]# mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/cf

[root@charon ~]# ls /mnt/cf/

Documents  misc

So you've plugged in the USB drive but have you mounted it? What distribution and desktop environment are you using? The latest GNOME (since 2.8) and very latest KDE (3.4) automatically mount USB drives if everything is working correctly. Otherwise you'll need to mount the USB drive before you can do anything with it. If you have an entry in your /etc/fstab for the USB key you can usually mount things with

Code:

mount /mnt/usb

where '/mnt/usb' is the directory you'd like to mount the USB drive to. It might be different, however, such as '/media/usb' or '/mnt/USB_KEY' or similar. Otherwise you'll have to do the following as root:

Code:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdXY /mnt/usb

where X is the drive letter (see below) and Y is the partition (usually 1)
The USB drive is probably detected as /dev/sda or /dev/sdb but it could be another letter.

You'd do well to search LQ for fstab, mounting USB, and so on because there are many threads dealing with this issue. You'll find some great tidbits such as how to mount the drive as a normal user.

im reunning debian 3.0 r4, with
KDE version (im not sure, but its the defualt that shipped with the debian)

running dmesg just gives me a list of hardware that i know is already working (running fine, eg hard disk, ethernet card etc)

trying to mount it (pen drive), it just tells me that there is no entry in fstab for it.....

Im certain the hardware is fine, but the usb drives light doesnt flicker even once.

any ideas?