uhci_hcd

[mdg]

Hello! I have a perplexing problem with a USB flashdrive. I have a 1 Gig Verbatim flashdrive and when inserted while running Biance 2.2 Gnome, nothing appears to happen. The flash drive light glows steadily, but I am unable to figure out how to access it.

When I look in system info I see "...USB 1-2: new full speed usb device using uhci_hcd and address "x" (the number changes). I do have a Dane/Elec flashdrive (256 mg) that IS automatically detected and mounted. Both drives are fat32.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for your help

mdg

[Lolo Uila]

First thing is to check the manufacturer's site to see if it is compatible with Linux (or at least not known to be incompatible). If there is nothing useful there...

There could be something wrong with the file system on the drive? If there is data on it you need, plug it into a machine it works on (Windows/Mac) and back up the data. Then reformat it as FAT16 or FAT32 and try it again.

If there is nothing on it you need, run gparted (the Gnome Partition Editor) and see if it can find the drive. If it can, then you could try to reformat (or even repartition) the drive from there.

If it still won't work in Linux it could just be incompatible. I know this USB mass storage stuff is supposed to be standard, but it isn't always the case, unfortunately.

I actually had an internal drive that didn't get along with Linux until I zero-filled the drive before repartitioning it. Just partitioning and formatting the drive was not enough. I had to use a disk utility to completely erase the drive by writing zeros to the entire drive first (which completely wipes the drive clean, erasing any previous data, partition table, boot sectors, etc.). After zero filling the drive I was able to partition and format the drive for use in Linux.

Good luck.

Aloha, Tim

[mdg]

Tim, thanks for your reply - may have to resort to that.

I found other information about USB support. Using the command:
lspci -v | grep USB

tells me : marsha@marsha-desktop:~$ lspci -v | grep USB
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801AA USB (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Intel Corporation 82801AA USB

According to the information I found UHCI is only USB 1.1 compliant, no 2.0 USB support, which I suspect is why an older 256 MB flashdrive is detected in this distro. Another distro I have detects all my flash drives, so I am guessing it is missing USB 2.0 support causing the problem. Is there any way to update the kernal for support?

MDG