USB works. Flash drive doesn't.

[Jayce]

This is by far the strangest thing I've ran into yet...

I have an A-DATA 8gb flash drive which has worked for 3 weeks fine since I bought it on NewEgg. Two nights ago, it stopped responding cold turkey. I am running a usb printer and a usb mouse which both work. I also plugged in a usb wireless adapter along with my phone (which has a usb hookup) and my phone was mounted just fine. Also, my external hard drive (usb) mounted just fine as well. So we know that Ubuntu does not have a problem recognizing USB because it recognizes multiple things. And also we know Ubuntu doesn't have a problem mounting storage devices because my phone gets mounted as a 2gb storage device (micro sd card inside) and my external hard drive gets mounted as a storage device, as they should.

But yet, my flash drive simply doesn't work. It just doesn't respond. It's 8gb, FAT32. This flash drive has been tested in Vista Ultimate (on this same computer) and XP Pro on my work laptop, along with several Compaq/HP's at work. The flash drive works fine. Ubuntu is the only thing that cannot recognize it.

I booted up to three LiveCD's on this computer and tried my flash drive in each one. Each LiveCD failed to recognize the flash drive. Gparted showed nothing and sudo fdisk -l showed nothing.
Hardy 64
Intrepid 32
Intrepid 64

Synopsis -

-We know my USB ports work because Ubuntu recognizes several other working devices.
-We know my USB flash drive works because Vista (on the same PC) and XP (on other pcs) recognize it.
-We know that Ubuntu has no problem with storage devices because it recognizes my phone and external HDD just fine.

When I run lsusb without the flash drive plugged in, it responds instantly.
When I run lsusb with the flash drive plugged in, it lags for about 60 seconds before responding... that's not normal.

The very strange part is, in my thread on Ubuntu Forums, as of 2 am last night somebody posted saying they were having the exact same problem with their 8gb A-DATA flash drive and could not find an explanation why it works in XP but not in Ubuntu.

I'm lost.

EDIT - Also, I formatted my 8gb flash drive to FAT32 again using Windows XP Pro. Still, it yielded no change.

 

[Jayce]

So I bit the bullet tonight and bought an 8gb Sandisk Cruzer at wal mart when I saw the tux logo on the back. Further reading showed it's officially supported by Mac, Linux, XP, and Vista. Sounds like my kind of flash drive since I use all of those operating systems at work!

So anyway, the Cruzer works in my system in Ubuntu just fine. Yet the A-DATA still does not respond... yet works fine in XP and Vista. I'm starting to wonder if I even used it in my system. I'm willing to bet my car that I did, because I remember transferring some new stuff to it. But...djafkl;sjdklasd... I swear I did. I just can't see where things went wrong for it to not work anymore under Ubuntu.

But, nonetheless, I have a working flash drive under this system and I'm at least happy.

Now, I'm on the lookout to see if this particular flash drive is officially tested with Ubuntu/Linux or not. Anybody know if A-DATA is known to support Linux? Or if anybody here has that flash drive? I don't know the model number, but it's a rubber orange/black model. It's really kind of unique so if you have it you'd know it... so if you have it and it works with Ubuntu, I'd like to know!

 

[luckyhooked]

I've got the same problem with a different flash drive. I've got a CORSAIR 16GB, and for the past 6 months it's been working fine on my Ubuntu system. As of today however, it is no longer recognized. The thing still works on XP, and my other flash drives still work on Ubuntu, so I'm a little mystified and a little frustrated. Anyways, at least you know you're not alone. I also got my flash from NewEgg, but again that was 6 months ago.

 

[farinha]

type lsusb on the terminal and check if the flash drive is recognized.

 

[kmote]

Didn't know that command, thanks for that. I was about to suggest `mount -l|grep ^/dev` and `ls -la /dev/disk/by-id/|grep -i usb`

 

[Schecters]

How old of a kernel are you using? I remember I had this problem a long time ago, but it was remedied with a kernel update. I remember being able to format the stick to NTFS with gparted and then being able to use it. Worth a try.