Loading ...Linux: How to use USB pen / flash stick
More and more people these days using the USB pen and flash memories instead of floppies and CDs. They come is different sizes from 128MB upto 2 GB. Moreover, may new Linux user find it difficult to use usb devices, the main problem is people don’t understand how it works...
USB devices use SCSI devices names
SCSI devices such as /dev/sda use to represent your first USB pen/stick and equivalent partitions are as follows:
Sample 256 MB USB PEN (E: is 100 MB, F: is rest of the free space)
Linux Partition => Windows XP/NT
/dev/sda1 => E: (assuming that C: is hard-disk; D: is VD/CD/RW)
/dev/sda2 => F: (assuming that C: is hard-disk; D: is DVD/CD/RW; E: is first drive USB pen 100 MB drive)
Linux Kernel must have support for USB
Linux kernel must compiled with support for
i) SCSI disk
ii) USB Support
iii) USB Mass support
Most of the modern Linux distribution comes with all sort of support. If it is not included, get latest kernel from http://kernel.org/ and make sure you compile it with above features + file system support such as ext2/3, vfat and so on…
Commends to mount USB Pen / Flash memory stick under Linux
a) Log in as the root user (or use sudo command)
b) Create a mount point
# mkdir –p /mnt/pen
# mkdir –p /mnt/pen
c) To mount the disk run mount command:
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/pen
This command will mount MS-Windows XP/Vista E: into /mnt/pen
d) To use it or to see your files:
# cd /mnt/pen
# ls –l
e) To copy files from /home/rdl/*.c to directory to pen drive us cp command:
# cp –v /home/rdl/*.c /mnt/pen
f) You can use rest of the all command such as rm, rmdir, mv etc to copy, move or delete files.
g) To format the /dev/sda2 as Linux ext3 partitions use the following command:
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda2
h) To delete all partition and to create new partition use run fdisk program:
# fdisk /dev/sda
Refer to fdisk man page for more information on how to delete and create partitions.
g) To list all partition on all devices use the following command:
# fdisk –l
h) Use dmesg command to get more info on your USB devices:
# dmesg | grep –i "usb"
i) Run scandisk (window like stuff) on /dev/sda1:
# umount /dev/sda1
# fsck /dev/sda1
Further readings:
=> See the detailed guide USB Flash Memory HOWTO
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Tags: flash_memories, linux_partition, mount_pen_drive, mount_usb_device, scsi_devices, usb_devices, usb_pen, use_pen_drive
Thanks for good post
It worked for me…
Thank you muchly! Worked awesomely!
Thanks a bunch for this post, it helped me a lot.
thanks a lot in advance. I am not on my system currently but I know damn sure its gonna work and will bring to end to all my pain of error mounting CDROM just to install an app that doesn’t have internet access.
Sir, I wish to seek for assistance. I’ve installed the Redhat Linux package 7.2 and i’m unable to mount my flash stick. I would be happy if i could be given some assistance. Thanks in advance.
Peter,
Red hat 7.2 is too old. Get latest distro and you should able to use usb pen or drive. Old version has some issues. I recommend getting Fedora Core or Ubuntu Linux
You my good man, need to change your charachter encoding to UTF-8. there was quite a few symbols (all hyphens for example) that were messed up because the encoding was set to ISO-8859-1 by default… the meta tag is your friend
jercos,
Meta tag is updated.
Appreciate your post.
Hi, i’m a new learner of Linux. I installed a RedHat 9 Professional Edition in my workstation. When I plug in usb thumb drive to the usb port of PC, it wouldn’t detect. Is it RedHat 9 not support for the usb flash? If yes, how could I upgrade my PC to detect the usb flash? TQ.
Thank you for technical help.
Is it possible to have USB Flash Memory HOW To document in .pdf or .doc formats to be saved or download. I’m learnig Linux OS and my Linux Kernel is 2.6 (Mandrakelinux 10.1). Is there any GUI way of using USB pen on this version of OS?
Many Thanks in advance
Babak
i want make a folder tar and send it directly to usb so that it does not in my server. if any solution pls help me