Flash Memory Stick a failure in Knoppix 4.02

[dennyk858]

I had a "Unmountable Boot Volume" BSOD under WinXP. I needed the data recovered. I knew Knoppix was the way to go. That was the easy part. I thought I was going to be slick and copy the data onto my USB SimpleTech 512mb Flash Memory Stick (FMS) and be done. I tried under Knoppix 3.8 and it didn't work. I found several references that said it FMS didn't work in 3.8 so I spent 6 hours downloading 4.02 from Univ of Wisconsin.

4.02 was a huge disappointment! I expected plug and play like under Windows. No way. Matter of fact I could not even find a consistent way to mount the drive. Search Google yourselves and your will see lots of people with similiar experiences.

Finally, after trial and error, I got it mounted. Then I was told it was not a "block device". I did a DMESG | tail and saw that Knoppix could not find a filesystem to mount. Oy! this memory stick works right out of the package on Windows. Why is this so hard?

I finally solved the problem by formatting an old ide disk as FAT32 under WinXP using an external USB drive and copying the data to that.

Knoppix is a wonderful system which is why I am detailing my tale of woe. FMS are today's floppies. They have to be transportable between Windows and Linux if Linux is ever going to achieve parity with Windows.

I welcome comments. And, of course, instructions on how to read and write to a FMS under Knoppix.

Dennis.

[Capt. Cautious]

Greetings Denny,
I have been using my FD w/ Knoppix 4.0.2 for a while now. I mount the FD first, then go into winbblow$xp-pro ( which is what the rest of the office has) Occassionally I get a block error but usually the files are accessable. I have , so far, recovered several gig of data on three different drives. Having said that I do have to admit that the WD cavier drive is one I almost gave up on. I used two tools, A Lexar 1GB FD, A Sandisk 512MB to move the data to. I tried Knoppix 3.9 CD first and struck out. Unfortunately, it wasn't a straight transfer. I tried to move the files first - wrong move I lost one in the process. Then I used and old Maxtor 4GB ide drive with an external connection copied the data [ cp-r {path & file name } then the destination drive which had a fat32 fs. I was concerned about the copy from NTFS to Fat32 but I needen't have. It went fine. The move to the FD went smooth from there. Since I have not used Sony's memory stick but I suspect proprietary formatting, like Sony is so fond of, as your most likely problem. BTW, After their last fiasco there is no way I will ever use sony equiptment, programs or disks ever again. Good luck and I hope this helps. I have had fairly good luck with the lexar flash drives.
I Remain ~
In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious