Long Time to Read USB JumpDrive

[hata_ph]

Bus 1 Device 2: ID 05dc:a400 Lexar Media, Inc.

is that your USB JumpDrive or other USB device plug in while checking the lsusb?

btw, did you have another USB pendrive to test the performance?

[rbistolfi]

a long shot about the mount issue, just an idea to be evaluated by the experts, could be a permissions problem? May be the jumpdrive is mounted at boot time because that is done by the root user, same problem has been reported with the usb cameras and other serial devices. That never happened with a jumpdrive, but may be this one is special.

[newt]

suggestion to format the drive: i believe that would remove the information Windoze uses on load to recognize it; would remove the "system information" folder.

I should have qualified that suggestion with: "Backup your data first!!! because it will be lost".  Aside from that, there shouldn't be a 'system information' folder on the drive.  I have a couple flash drives that I use to move data from win to nix to osx and neither have a 'system information' folder.  Has your flash drive ever been loaded with a live version of winXP, or U3 software?  If yes then I think you will definitely be wanting to scrub the drive clean.  I've specifically read about the "pain" that can be caused from the U3 software, and the troubles to remove all of the remnants of the U3 app.

1) sometimes long time to read the card when opening the file system for it

I would hope that it's related to the mounting/umounting issue and that by fixing the issue would alleviate this problem, but you never know.

2) never recognized unless present at boot; not recognized if removed or inserted after boot, except to unmount it if removed when present at boot.

Back to basics on this one.  Reboot your system without the flash drive attached.  Once booted, insert the flash drive (the expectation is that it will not be automatically mounted).  Then run lsusb - can you identify the device?  If yes, can you then manually mount the drive?  If no, then (guru needed) is there a manual way to force a recheck of the USB hubs or all connected hardware (udev function??).

[bobbear43]

response to hata_ph:
the lsusb output was with the usb drive present at boot; if inserted after boot, lsusb returns: Bus 1 Device 1 : ID 0000:0000 --- nothing there.
right now I do not have another usb jump drive but i can check and see if the usb ethernet NIC i have is recognized when it is inserted.

response to newtor:
will try reformatting the drive and see if that improves performance. it has never had xp or u3 on it .... just files to exchange between computers when couldn't network to do that.
if device is not present at boot and it is subsequently inserted, lsusb returns: Bus 1 Device 1 : ID 0000:0000 --- nothing there, as in response to hata_ph.
i have no idea how to manually mount the drive. instructions on that please?

[newt]

Thanks for the info.  I think Joe was correct in his thinking that the device is only being polled at boot time and not during runtime.  Someone else mentioned this also, but do you happen to have anything else that's usb that you could test lsusb with? A keyboard, mouse, extra flash drive, webcam, anything?  Just something that you could try plugging in during runtime to see if lsmod displays the appropriate device info.

Check out 'man mount' for more info on syntax and other options, but an example for a flash drive would be:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /home/<mount_point>

...where <mount_point> is an empty directory in your /home directory.  However, since udev does not pick up your flash drive during runtime then (technically) sda1 should not be created and thus not available for mounting.

Here is some further reading on manually mounting your drive: http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2007/03/steps-to-manually-mount-usb-flash-drive.html

Good luck!

[GrannyGeek]

This trick from Joe 1962 enabled me to get a media card recognized when I used my built-in media card reader. Insert the device and as root at a terminal prompt, type
sginfo -l

After I do that, VL recognizes the card and puts an icon on the desktop.

If you don't get an icon for your drive, run fdisk -l as root in a terminal and see if it's listed. If so, you should be able to mount it manually as root.

I don't know if this will help your situation, but it wouldn't hurt to try.
--GrannyGeek