Operating System: Fedora Core 3
Kernel: 2.6.9-1.667
Troublesome device: Transcend JetFlash 1GB, a USB memory stick.

The JetFlash packaging claims it should be automatically detected by Linux. I was having no success.

Previous postings in various discussion areas suggested that sometimes the problem arises from the default formatting. They suggested using Windows to reformat the device in FAT32 format rather than the default FAT format. These postings all related to other versions of Linux, but I thought it was worth trying.

I tried reformatting the JetFlash on Windows 2000. It didn't fix the problem with Linux.

In Windows 2000, when your reformat something the default volume label is blank. On about the 5th formatting attempt I finally gave it a Volume Label. This fixed it. On plugging the JetFlash into my Linux system it gets automatically mounted, and an icon for it appears on the desktop, showing the volume label I just gave it.

So this made me suspicious. I tried several more reformats from within Windows 2000. It seems the problem wasn't FAT vs FAT32. It was the volume label. If I reformat in either FAT or FAT32 with a blank volume label, Linux won't recognise it. If I reformat in either FAT or FAT32 with a proper volume label, Linux happily recognises it.

So, I suspect that when the device came out of its packaging it had no volume label, though it's too late for me to check that now. Also, when some people say they solved this problem by reformatting from FAT to FAT32, I wonder if what really fixed it was that they gave it a volume label when they reformatted it.

Red Hat and Fedora never have been the best distros around when it comes to automatically mounting external drives or memory cards/usb memory.
I mean my Suse 8.0 did all that and after that even Fedora Core 2 didn't manage to do it and every time I had to add mountpoints and entries to fstab, etc ...