I've got a brand new 40GB USB hard drive that I've partitioned as follows:

(sdb5) 20GB ext2
(sdb6) 15GB ext2
(sdb7) 5GB W95 FAT32 (LSA)

The two Linux partitions work perfectly, however I cannot mount the FAT partition. I have an IDE HD on my system with a W95 FAT32 (LSA) partition that is mounted in fstab with type vfat, however that fs type won't work to mount the one on the USB HD. I've tried every other fs type listed in man mount, but none of them work. I've reformatted the partition several times with Windows ME. I can mount it with usbfs, but that looks like I've mounted the actual device and not the partition (strange file descriptors that aren't really files, can't add/remove files, files stay when I umount). Yeah, no idea what that business is all about.

I've tried reloading usb-storage, but that doesn't work either. I'm thinking that maybe usb-storage can't handle a vfat that large, or maybe it thinks it's SCSI or something. fdisk -l shows it just like it should be, and I can mount FAT16 usb devices just fine. Any suggestions? Thanks.
ta0kira

have you tried mounting with the vfat type instead of auto, since fat can see only 2gb?
this is how i mount my (4gb) usb disk:
mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/sda /mnt/usbdisk

Is your usb disk FAT16? All of mine are. I've been trying to mount using:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb7 /mnt/anydev

as root. Can you tell me what fdisk -l says about your usb disk? Thanks.
ta0kira

Well, according to cfdisk (i dont'have a windows machine to verify) it's vfat but for some reason auto does not detect it when mounting. Unfortunately, i'm at work now and i don't have the disk with me to check the fdisk output. I'll send it when i get home in the afternoon!
Try this: unpluf the disk, type tail -f /var/log/messages, then plug the disk and see the outcome if no errors or warnings are displayed try mounting the partition and post the outcome. hopefully something will give us a clue about what's wrong

Nothing is added to /var/log/messages when I try to mount. This is strange because normally it will say something about the device you are trying to mount. I did `grep -n "sdb7" /var/log/messages` to see if it was in there, and I got about 10 lines, but sdb7 was within a list of the other partitions on sdb. Maybe a usb module problem? Or maybe I need to load one? Thanks.
ta0kira