file system cannot locate USB drive?

[lghs77]

sort of a Newbie here...

I've plugged in 3 different USB removable thumb drives into 6 different USB plugs on my Dell Vostro (5 years old) computer and I don't see anything opening up or indicating that they are recognized using the file system app, even after looking at / root, etc. I also looked in the "removable drives" widget at the bottom right of the screen, nothing showing up there.

My current installation is Mint 19.1 (?) recent clean new install about 3 months ago, with almost all recent updates, Cinnamon-64 version, no modifications of any significance since installation. Also: it's a dual boot with Windows 10 - hoping to get away from that eventually! - Thanks!

PS - My previous Linux experience is mostly with another computer, MUCH older, using Lubuntu 17.1 - and it shows the USB instantly after it is plugged in and I had a netbook also with Linux Mint

PPS - I haven't looked too much yet but so far I cannot figure out what tool to use to "analyze the system" and "discover devices" to see if the system recognizes that the USB inputs even exist - ??

[trapperjohn]

Without the usb plugged in, run:
lsusb
then plug it in and run:
lsusb

Comparing the two, does plugging in the usb change the output?

If not, then it's hardware troubles.

If it does, then the device was recognized, so, next run: (With and without the drive plugged in)

sudo lsblk

If the usb is recognized as a drive, there will be a new sdx entry in the output. If it's there. run:
sudo blkid
and post the output

If lsusb shows the drive but lsblk does not, then we need to dig further.

[lghs77]

trapperjohn: first of all, thanks for the very prompt & thorough response!

Due to length I've attached all of my commands & system responses, summarized here:

1.) first "lsusb" response shows generic titles, etc for all USBs available to the system,
2.) 2nd "lsusb" USB is identified as Bus 001 Device 014 ("Lexar JumpDrive trade; Pro 40-501", i.e. a very old 125mb flash drive)
3.) "sudo lsblk" shows a list including sdb and subcategory sdb1 121.5m (turns out this is the Lexar JumpDrive) - and at that point I still wasn't sure what I was looking at so I pulled out the JumpDrive and re-ran:
4.) "sudo lsblk" shows the sdb / sdb1 item disappeared - at that point I recognized the missing item was due to the JumpDrive so I reinserted it into the same USB port and ran:
5.) "sudo blkid" and got the identification as: /dev/sdb1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="bf27ed6f-01"

Can you tell me what to do with that? - Again, thanks very much!

[karlchen]

Hello, lghs77.

Have you perhaps disabled auto-mounting of plugged-in USB disk devices in your file-manager Nemo?
You might launch the "Disks" application, which is available in the Application Menu.
Inside the "Disks" application the plugged-in USB disk devices should be visible.
Select one and find out whether you can mount it? - The mount point will be under /media/lghs77/<nameofusbdevice>

HTH,
Karl
--
P.S.:
Sorry, I cannot be much more precise at the moment, because I am currently not logged in on my Mint 18.1 Cinnamon, but on my Ubuntu 18.04.2 Mate.

[trapperjohn]

Humm...
All seems well.

When you open your file manager, does it show on the left? If so, clan you click it from there and mount it?


If not, let's make sure it's not corrupted somehow.

First make sure it's recognized again by lsblk as sdb1.

If so, run:
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Then run:

ls -la /mnt

Are your files listed?

If so, close everything and run:

sudo umount /mnt # Just to keep it safe problems associated with additional troubleshooting.

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