Just a quick update on this (original post below for reference):
The problem turned out to be that the USB sticks were U3 devices. They *should* still be accessible under Linux but sometimes the U3 partition takes a long time to mount (or fail to mount) apparently delaying the data partition becoming available for anything up to a minute[1].
Removing U3 fixed the problem on the netbook (using the tools provided with the U3 device [2]). However it now doesn't seem to work in Windows..... Not solved that bit yet. (Given that it's purpose was transfering files between the Windows desktop and the netbook, that's a pretty big problem!)
[1] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=196214 [2] http://www.u3.com/uninstall/
Mark Rogers
Mark Rogers wrote:
An uncle (just mistyped that as "unclue", oops!) of mine has bought an Aspire One and can't get his USB stick to work. Can anyone offer advice? His message below:
I've just bought an Acer "Aspire One" note book and it runs on Linux It's got 120Gb of memory which is useful and so I want use some of the space so I thought I'll use a memory stick. But I can't make it work........ having searched the Help files(under Using removable media" that "Thunar supports removable media if it is built with support for HAL"
My memory sticks are either Sandisk Cruzer or I have a Freecom "Toughdrive" neither seem to work. So had a look on the internet and it seems to be a common problem "Hal compatibility with memory sticks".
Is there anything you can recommend, Ideally I want to use this notebook as a secondary backup and at the moment it's looking a bit useless!