[ILUG] USB mass storage woes

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Marek McGann (m.mcgann at sussex.ac.uk):

> Picked up a nice new Philips "wearable audio" mp3 key, but having a
> nightmare trying to mount it under Mandrake 10.0.
> 
> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
> 
> either hangs (there's no output and the process can't be killed) or
> reports that /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device.  [...]

> Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
> scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
>   Vendor: PHILIPS   Model: Key Ring (128MB)  Rev: 0001
>   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
> SCSI device sda: 256001 512-byte hdwr sectors (131 MB)
> sda: assuming Write Enabled
> sda: assuming drive cache: write through
>  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0:end_request: I/O error, dev sda,
> sector 256000
> Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 256000

There are a lot of dodgy USB flash drives, _but_ one possibility you might
consider is that it might identify itself as a (floppy-like) ATAPI
Removable Media Device (ARMD), in which case the filesystem (partition)
on it would be mountable as /dev/sda, rather than /dev/sda1 (which is
appropriate for devices that identify themselves as hard drive-like
entities).  Give that a try:

# mount  -t vfat  /dev/sda  /mnt/usb

You might find other useful tips in my _Linux Journal_ article.  See:
"USB Flash Drives" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Hardware/

It turned out that one of my _own_ flash drives is an ARMD.  I write
about that in the article.

-- 
Cheers,
Rick Moen                                     Age, baro, fac ut gaudeam.
rick at linuxmafia.com