USB Jumpdrive problems and Gnome: Don't use GPILOTD

[Wolfgang Gill]

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 20:12:38 -0500, Sam Williams wrote
> I have been having difficult with usb thumb style drives and FC1 / 
> FC2 for a long time. I have scoured the web for reports of similar problems
> and solutions. While I found quite a number of problem reports there
> were no solutions. In fact, to the contrary, people seemed to abandon
> the search.
> 
> Recently I purchased a Lexar JumpDrive (128 mbytes), which replaced the
> 256 Mbytes Sandisk MiniCruiser that I just knew was bad. Well, it worked
> great and I didn't give it a second thought.... My wife, kind soul that
> she is, went out and bought me the 256 Mbyte Lexar Jumpdrive. I was
> excited. I had another jumpdrive with twice the capacity.... I was
> shocked when I plugged it into my system and had the exact problem I 
> had seen with the MiniCruiser. The problem scenario looks like a defective
> device. The system tries multiple-times to mount it, then ultimately
> comes up with some timeout messages and a message that says that the 
> fat filesystem is unreadable!!!
> 
> After many days I have found the source of the problem. If I have
> gpilotd ( version 2.0.10) running on my system I can mount and use
> 128Mbyte jumpdrives and lower, but it will not allow me to use anything
> of higher capacity then this. If I kill or pause the gpilotd, EVERYTHING
> works just fine!!! I can use both of my 256 Mbyte usb drives as well 
> as all the lower capacity ones that I now own....
> 
> Gpilotd has some real problems. It is somehow getting in the way of 
> my use of the jump drives, and it will not allow an easy hot-sync 
> with my Sony Clie. I have to try multiple times. Sometimes I have to 
> try and then recycle the gpilotd, before I can get a successful 
> sync. There is a real problem with this daemon.... Sadly, I think 
> I'm the only person that has seen this relationship..
> 
> Anyway, for all of you that have been having these types of usbdrive
> problems I would suggest you make sure and try it without gpilotd
> running in the mix....
> 
> -- 
> Sam Williams                                             samurai at acm.org
[snip]

I've had simlar problems with an Apacer HT202 (1GB). I've noticed that the
format on these devices are not of the standard configuration. As it would not
mount on my system either. However, it had some instructions in the manual to
reconfigure the drive. And now it works perfectly. I'm not familar with your
device, but if you goto this site (below), and download the manual. It has the
instructions there on how to reformat it, so you can mount it properly in Linux.

http://www.apacer.com/apacer_english/product_html/handy_steno_ht202.asp

Hope this helps.

Wolf
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