This is my situation...

I have a Debian testing/unstable system... and the USB-memory works really nice... it is detected when I plug it in ( USB-storage compiled into the kernel) and I have no problems with it... it is detected at /dev/sdb since I allready have one scsi-disk. ( a real one that is /dev/sda)

but when I try to boot Knoppix on my system the USB-memory is not detected. and since it is not detected I can not mount it as my home directory.

If I, when knoppix has booted, run modprobe usb-storage the USB-memory is available for mounting but that is to late to use it as my home-directory.

My system is like this:

AMD XP1500+
MSI K7T266 Pro2
256Mb DDR
2 x 80 Gb WD harddrives (hda and hdd)
1 x 40 Gb IBM harddrive (hdc)
1 x 18,3 Gb IBM UltraStar SCSI (sda)
1 x DVD-rom ( hdb)
1 x PlexWriter SCSI (sr1)
1 x Plextor Ultraplex SCSI (sr0)
Tekram DC-390F (SCSI-card)
PoV Geforce3 Ti200 128Mb DDR
AOpen AW744 (soundcard)
bt878-based TV-card (Hauppage)

I hope this cleared things up a bit.

/LinuxSam