External USB Mass storage ALI chipset based
 

I have a external usb mass storage device which is based on the ALI chipset that allows me to use older notebook HDDs as a usb device. In windows there's a need for a pci to usb bridge driver in order to make it work (in ME/2000/xp that's natively available--in Win 98 seperate drivers are required and those drivers are readily available for windows).

I haven't used Linux for much more then setup, learning, and web browsing but would like to use this device for future references. The drive has a slew of windows and linux drivers/programs that I wish to be able to swap back and forth. It is formatted as fat32. I have no intention of reformatting it or using it for another purpose. It is just too valuable for when I go to customer sites and need some file or driver.

What I'm after is making it accessible from any linux box I approach with little to no effort. In other words I don't want to have to modify the customer's Linux in order to get it to work.

When I plug it into my current linux box I see nothing indicating it is available and none of the information on the screens when linux is starting seems to indicate it sees the device either.

Anyone have ideas on how to make this work? This may or may not be a challenge to some of you.

Thanks in advance,


Jim

Some additional information. In The KDE Info Center under USB Devices it seems to see the hardware. For instance it says USB 2.0 storage device, provides the serial number, and shows the vendor ID of Acer Labs Inc.

So, the next question then becomes: How do I get it mounted?

Thanks in advance,


Jim

P.S. Phew, linux questions drop off the listing extremely fast. I posted this last night and it was viewed 33 times but this morning it was posted past the 5th page on the list.