USB 'disk drives'

[Dan Coutu]

Well, I got one of those cute little USB 'thumb drive' things that is 
supposed to look like a removable disk on Windows and is supposed to also 
work with Linux. So I plugged it in and began the adventure of trying to 
figure out how to access it.

I see that using usbview shows me the thing and recognizes that it is a 
storage device with the correct amount of free space. Further it appears 
that it is seen as device /dev/sda. Okay. So the intuitive command
'mount /dev/sda /mnt/usbdrive' (after first creating /mnt/usbdrive of 
course) wants to have a filesystem type specified. That's where I'm getting 
stumped. It seems to use a FAT filesystem but uses a 12-bit FAT instead of 
16. None of the filesystem types I've tried will work.

I'd love to setup the thing to automount but can't do that if I can't mount 
it at all! Has anyone already wrestled this alligator and figured out how 
to use it? If not I'll dive into research mode and learn more about using 
USB things with Linux.

Thanks!
-- 

Dan Coutu
Managing Director
Snowy Owl Internet Consulting, LLC
http://www.snowy-owl.com/
Mobile: 603-759-3885
Fax: 603-673-6676