16GB USB Drive Not Accessible

[Robert Nichols]

Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> I recently bought a snazzy new 16GB USB pen drive from the local store -
> it was only $29! I have several drives that are 8GB and smaller from the
> same store that are the same brand.
> 
> Imagine my surprise when:
> * The 16GB drive is not accessible on either F9 or F10 Snap 3
> * The 8GB drives all work just fine on both F9 and F10 Snap 3
> * The 16GB drive works fine on Windows XP
> * The 16GB drive also works on a Windows XP VM running on top of F9!!!
> 
> I can only conclude from this that something is a miss that causes F9 to
> not be able to access and use USB pen drives that are bigger than 8GB,
> and that this most likely has something to do with a file system driver
> or such.
> 
> Anyone else seen this yet? Is there a fix / work-around?

I've seen several USB pen drives with inconsistent partition tables,
such as a CHS geometry that leaves a few unallocated sectors (no great
surprise) but a partition with a sector count that goes beyond the
claimed last cylinder and does use the entire device.  Automount is
deliberately made sensitive to such anomalies.

Take a look at what "fdisk -l" and "fsck.msdos" have to say about the
drive.  Errors such as "Partition has different physical/logical
endings" should be cause for concern.  You might need to repartition
the device and/or rebuild the filesystem.

-- 
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                 Do NOT delete it.