USB flash drives won't mount

[David Fletcher]

On Sunday 13 May 2007 20:28, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> David Fletcher wrote:
>
> You may want to run, as root, "fdisk -l" and see if the flash drive
> is detected. Depending on the partition type, and if the disk has a
> label, it may be getting detected, but not auto-mounted. I have a CF
> card that works that way:
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 8 MB, 8028160 bytes
> 2 heads, 32 sectors/track, 245 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes
>
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *           1         245        7824    4  FAT16 <32M
>
> But another card in the same reader mounts no problem:
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 15 MB, 15990784 bytes
> 4 heads, 32 sectors/track, 244 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 128 * 512 = 65536 bytes
>
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *           1         243       15536    1  FAT12
>
> I suspect that if I ever get around to reformatting the 8 MB card as
> a FAT12 card, it will mount properly also...
>
> While this will not solve your problem, knowing if the system
> detects it, and if so, how it sees the drive, should help point to
> the problem. But if you are in a hurry to get it working, you may be
> able to solve the problem giving the drive a "name". For an ext2/3
> partition, e2label works. For a FAT partition, it is easy to do in
> Windows, but I am not sure how to do it in Linux except on a new
> partition. (mkdosfs -n option.)
>
> Mikkel

I get:-

<start>
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1211     9727326    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            1212       24320   185623042+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5            1212        3123    15358108+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6            3124        3136      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            3137       24320   170160448+  8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 172.1 GB, 172100681728 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20923 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdb: 2063 MB, 2063073280 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        7870     2014704    e  W95 FAT16 (LBA)
<end>

The last device, /dev/sdb1 appears to be my USB flash drive.

I've used windows to name the drive, which is the name given (in all upper 
case) to the desktop icon when I mount it using my son's computer. But it 
still won't work as it did a day or two ago on my computer, so I conclude 
that something got broken in the last batch of updates.

Dave

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