[PLUG] Mounting Thumb Drive

alan alan at clueserver.org
Fri Mar 17 20:37:04 UTC 2006


On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, John Jason Jordan wrote:

> The 512 MB Cruzer thumb drive I bought on eBay arrove.
>
> Now I need to mount it. I created a mount point as /media/thumbdrive. But I can't figure out what Linux is calling the drive. I did dmesg | tail and it seems to be /dev/sda -- at least it identifies something there as /dev/sda and having 512 MB. If I go to File > Open in any application it shows up as SanDisk Cruzer Micro.
>
> I'm assuming it's formatted vfat, since I bought it from someone using Windows. And if it's not, that's what I need on it, because the purpose is to be able to transfer files to non-linux computers. I double-checked it by plugging it into my Windows 2000 desktop, and in My Computer it is seen as 512 MB, formatted Fat32. For kicks I dragged a small .txt file and copied it onto the thumb drive. Windows seemed to have no problem doing so, and the file now shows up on the drive in Windows Explorer.
>
> Moving it back to the Linux computer, I tried sudo mount /dev/sda /media/thumbdrive and it said it wanted the filesystem type. So I read the man page and it seems I should insert "vfat" in between the dev and the mount point. But that doesn't work either -- all I get is the help messages with indication which feature I did wrong.
>
> I also opened Krusader with sudo and tried to use its mount-man feature, but it can't see /dev/sda. Evidently mount-man can only mount stuff that is in fstab, and this is not in there because I'm not sure what to call it. There's already a /dev/sda in there, and it refers to my 60 GB pocket disk, which is not currently connected. I don't want to mess that up. I can't find any instructions on how to edit fstab.
>
> At the moment the thumb drive is in a USB port on the Linux computer and all happily lit up emitting an eerie blue light. If I try to open the file I put on there (e.g., with gedit) I get the error message "Unable to mount the selected volume.:Error: given UDI is not a mountable volume."
>
> I bet I'm just missing some little key point. :(

Can fdisk open it?

/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda

See what the partition table looks like.

I have a thumb drive that has gotten fried in some weird manner.  (It was 
removed from a Windows system incorrectly.)  fdisk says it cannot open it, 
but lsusb can identify the drive and sees it.  (Just won't mount it.)

Anyone know how to reinitialize a thumb drive?

-- 
"Remember there is a big difference between kneeling down and bending over." - Frank Zappa



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