User Feedback :: how to open my usb drive

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It has no partitions (and G-Parted confirms this) and it only fails to work when inserted into this laptop when running DSL -- Windoze recognizes it.

It has to have at least one partition whether the partition table is corrupt or not. /mnt is showing those four partitions because that's what's being detected by the scripts that manage hotplug. That's why I asked if you've checked it with cfdisk (you may need to use the -z flag to force it to open if it has a malformed or corrupt table) to see what partitions are actually on that device.

The fact that gparted sees "nothing" only confirms my hunch about corruption or a malformed partition table. If I had to guess, it most like has been formatted vfat but with an invalid partition table -- something Windows is much more tolerant of than Linux 2.4 -- and it's been removed without properly unmounting or using "remove safely." There are a few other things that can lead to what you describe, but that's the most likely scenario based on my experience.

And if that is the case, the problem isn't DSL.

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I will run DSL live on my big desktop later to see if possibly there is some weird corruption in the CD (version 4.2).

The problem isn't with the CD. I can guarantee you that. I've used every version of 4.2 with everything from USB sticks and USB ZIP disks without *any* issue like you're describing.

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I DID plug in another dying/dead jump drive, trying to see if any computer would open it; however i doubt that hurt anything. It didn't in the other computers.

Okay, now see, that's another wrinkle you should've explained when you brought up sdb1. Which order did you install these devices? Did you pay attention to changes in fstab between inserting them? Or was the sdb1 what you added yourself?

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If it works, it sounds like time for a reinstall (UGH!). That would mean i start over from scratch, if i understand DSL -- no preserving data in the home folder, right?.

There's no need to reinstall for this. Just fix what's broken. If you did a traditional hard drive install, you have a few things you can do to keep /home. What I do with my hard drive installs is set up a persistent /home anyway. I see from your fstab you have three partitions set up now. One for DSL, one for swap. What's on the third (don't give me any Abbott and Costello lines)? If you have Windows on it and it's large enough for your files, you can copy /home to Windows (make a tar.bz2) and then copy it back if you reinstall. Or at the very least you can back up only the files you absolutely need and copy them to one of your USB sticks or whatever.

OK - lessee...

1. You're a comedian. Good, i like to laugh!!

2. Yes first partition is Windoze.
3. Sounds like i should simply copy my files from my jump drive to my HD, then (in Windoze probably) reformat my jump drive to either FAT16 or FAT32, next, recopy my files back onto the jump drive, and finally boot the laptop into DSL, and it all "should" be fine.

So i will do -- when my son finishes his homework on the laptop--!!

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and it all "should" be fine.

As long as you check fstab to make sure all the old entries for sda1, sda2, etc., are gone BEFORE inserting the device again. Also, don't unplug the device without either unmounting or checking /etc/mtab to make sure it's not mounted. Check fstab again between mounting different devices or replugging in the same device to make sure it's not assigning mount points that it shouldn't (like if you have one partition on the stick and after a few insertions and removals it looks like it has several).

I'm still curious about that mount point you said you added for sdb(1?). Whatever you did can be undone. This doesn't require a reinstall because it's a matter of sorting out a few files/directories/mount points and getting the USB stick sorted out.

Happy daze!!!

(Hey, i'm picking up a little coding know-how as well!)

All is copasetic in LinuxLand once again. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The fix was as you suggested - reformatting. Interestingly, my big Mepis machine had no problem with the jump drive all along -- but the Win98 side of the laptop did NOT like it very much! So i reformatted under Mepis. I tried to be cute and format to FAT32 -- Windoze wouldn't even talk to it, so i went back to FAT16. Windoze finally understood, so i didn't even have to re-reformat it under Win98. Way cool and not always the case in my experience.

OK - to clean up - no worry about the sdb entry i made. I knew enough to edit it back out after i discovered it didn't work.

Finally -- hmm, i wonder if the blame goes to me or to the dying SanDisk jumpdrive. IDK. I only have one DSL install, just for this laptop.
So again -- thank you! Gee, i hope someone else can profit this as well. You have been most gracious.

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