dcihon wrote:This is what it shows when I plug it in:
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root@cihonm:~ # dmesg | tail
[66757.664309] scsi host4: usb-storage 1-8.5:1.0
[66758.667401] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access General UDisk 5.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[66758.668087] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[66758.668330] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 131072000 512-byte logical blocks: (67.1 GB/62.5 GiB)
[66758.668522] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[66758.668527] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
[66758.668729] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[66758.668738] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[66758.670214] sdb: sdb1
[66758.671307] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
The light on the USB drive is solid.
When I eject it the Device description changes from 67 GB Volume to General UDisk: 67 GB Volume and the light is flashing very rapidly. So it doesn't get fully ejected.
The only way I have found to fully eject it is after ejecting it from the file manager then open Disks and power it off. If I just take it out when it is flashing then it write protects it and I can't add or delete anything on it.
Should I buy a more expensive flash drive?
What I am going to use this flash drive for is listening to my mp3 files in my car.
I've never seen one act like that, and the "assuming write through" stuff kind of reminds me of using a floppy?. Maybe you can get more info by looking at dmesg during the whole insert/mount/eject thing...
I have good luck with the cheap usb flash drives. I won't mention any brands but you know them I'm sure. The general way the led seems to work usually is:
Plug it in,
led starts to blink fairly steady about 7 times.
led then begins to fade in and out slowly (idle)
led blinks rapidly when mounted, then idle.
led blinks rapidly when reading/writing, then idle.
led blinks rapidly when umount, then idle.
Are you sure you haven't setup some doodad to sync or open the thing automatically? You really don't want to unplug it when something is accessing it. You can use something like fuser to find out if anything has it open.
I use dosfsck with the second verification pass to fix mine when it gets dirty bit:
$ man dosfsck
# dosfsck -avV
On occasion FAT32 can get so twisted up that only an old ver of chkdsk from dos or early windows can straighten it out. It's pretty reliable on linux though.