A thousand USB questions .. later why do USB devices not mount/stop working

I know this is loaded post but I'm getting really torqued at the USB sub-system in OS X.
I bought a mini ~2 years to see what the OSX scene was like, so far it's mostly been a great OS but the USB problems past at work, on my home system only cropped up in the past few months is very frustrating. :-P
I've done the googling, apples pathetic troubleshooting pages, run the Profiler and USB Prober trying to determine all with no luck.
Can any of you help me "get it"?
At work, we had a OSX server a few years that failed to stop mounting a USB drive that had been used several time before. It was under support and Apple failed to resolve the problem!!
I had a Transcend usb enclosure that worked in 10.3 and by the time 10.4 rolled around it stopped working (checked on a few different macs)
Now I have a iogear gfr280 memory card reader/writer that worked three months ago and just tried to use it the other day ... borked!!. I then take it to work plug it into my co-workers iMac running 10.5, mounts up and I can copy my photos off the SD card, no issues. WTH!?
Also, just the other day my digital camera powershot A630 batteries ran out right as I was importing... Took me three hours of reboots, plugging in my thumb drive and camera only to have them show up for a split second then disappear from iphoto or the desktop.
I even thought of calling Apple on this one but I'm leary based on prior experience with the server incident.
This is even worse than under Linux(run that too), most times the kernel either supports the device or it doesn't ( I can live with that! ). None of this .. I'm gonna work and then all the sudden stop one day.
Anyone? Would it be worth paying for a one-time support call?

Try things in this USB faq.
DALE

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My USB-Stick is marked busy even though not mounted (?)

Also Subject lines are too short.
Hello there, my name is Ayutac, I use Arch for some while now and I probably screwed up.
tl;dr: My USB-Stick is marked busy even though not mounted (?)
Previous History: I was trying to get the newest Arch iso on a stick of my friend, so I got the iso here and moved the stick's content to my extern hard drive. I used the opportunity to experiment how good "mv -t target_dir *" would work and interrupted it because I was stupid. Two folders somehow weren't movable through mv anymore, so I mv'ed everything else – now explicit – and moved the content of the two folders via pcmanfm. After that there were about 16kB on the stick left.
Next I copied the iso using
dd bs=4M if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdc && sync
as suggested by the wiki. I looked at the stick; to my surprise the two folders I left there where still there, though filled with gibberish data. I thought I might give it a try, shut down, booted from stick. Black screen with a blinking text cursor for minutes. I concluded it didn't work and tried some other way. Following the wiki I was given the task to format the usb stick anew.
Thinking I knew what I was doing I used fdisk several times (including rebooting), getting myself two partitions with FAT32 (or so I think). But that somehow screwed it up.
The problem: After partioning and rebooting it seems I can't mount the partitions to copy the content of the iso. lsblk says
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 21.7G 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 350M 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 95.4G 0 part
├─sda4 8:4 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 95.4G 0 part /
├─sda6 8:6 0 7.6G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7 8:7 0 711.1G 0 part /home
sdb 8:16 0 465.8G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 465.8G 0 part /run/media/nait/nanika
sdc 8:32 1 3.6G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 1 650M 0 part
└─sdc2 8:34 1 3G 0 part
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
(sdc is the stick) but I get
> sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb
mount: /dev/sdc1 is already mounted or /mnt/usb busy
> sudo umount /mnt/usb
umount: /mnt/usb: not mounted
Furthermore "lsof | grep sdc" returns nothing, neither does "cat /proc/mounts | grep sdc" or "cat /etc/mtab | grep sdc". The only clue is
> systemctl -a | grep sdc
dev-sdc.device loaded active plugged 1000 ARCH_201409
dev-sdc1.device loaded active plugged 1000 ARCH_201409
dev-sdc2.device loaded active plugged 1000 ARCH_201409
sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:14.0-usb3-3\x2d3-3\x2d3:1.0-host9-target9:0:0-9:0:0:0-block-sdc-sdc1.device loaded active plugged 1000 ARCH_201409
sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:14.0-usb3-3\x2d3-3\x2d3:1.0-host9-target9:0:0-9:0:0:0-block-sdc-sdc2.device loaded active plugged 1000 ARCH_201409
sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:14.0-usb3-3\x2d3-3\x2d3:1.0-host9-target9:0:0-9:0:0:0-block-sdc.device loaded active plugged 1000 ARCH_201409
I tried to shut the devices down, but that didn't seem to work.
Furthermore the pcmanfm shows two mount points of the iso/stick but returns error message when clicking on them:
Error mounting /dev/sdc1 at /run/media/nait/ARCH_201409: Command-line `mount -t "iso9660" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=100,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500" "/dev/sdc1" "/run/media/nait/ARCH_201409"' exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: /dev/sdc1 is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: /dev/sdc1 is already mounted or /run/media/nait/ARCH_201409 busy
Goal:
1. Make the stick usable again, with 2 partitions.
2. Copy the iso on the first partition.
3. Have a functioning Arch booting stick.

Welcome to Arch Linux.
A few questions and comments. First, are the files you copied from the disk safe? Since the plan was to wipe the disk anyway, I would suggest next time copying rather than moving files. I always get itchy when I move files. I have made some stupid mistakes where I copied hundreds of files to one output file, each one overwriting the previous. Of course, as it was a move, the source file was gone as well. Fortunately, I maintain backups. I would also suggest you look into the rsync facility when doing bulk copies.
That said, another excellent way to destroy data is the dd command (There are those who claim dd means just that) Are you certain that the usb disk had been been placed at the /dev/sda node? In the thread title, you made the assertion that the drive was not mounted. dd will run just fine even if the disk is mounted (I do not recommend this). What were you using to look at those folders that had become full of gibberish? Command line tools? A graphical file manager? (Nautilus, Thunar, Dolphin, SpaceFM) It is possible that the tool you were using was unaware that the contents had changed and was using cached information.
As to your goals. First, copying the iso to /dev/sdc tells the system to use the entire device for the iso, not the first partition. Our iso is not designed to be placed in a partition, I don't think you will meet with success trying to block copy the iso to a partition. If you want to try it, the destination would be /dev/sda1 (for partition 1) Make sure the partition is large enough. I would suggest that you use the entire disk by dd'ing the iso to the /dev/sdc (assuming it is c) node, but make certain that all of the partitions are dismounted. I know you think you did that, but I have my doubts. Please use command line tools. I don't trust GUIs that try to help too much.
If you want multiple partitions, use fdisk and re-partition the device. Then create a file system in each of those partitions.
It has been a while since I have tried to master a USB that will boot. I may have a faulty memory, or I may be using really old, outdated, information, but... I think that a USB has to boot as if it were a CD drive . I am not certain that a hard drive type structure with multiple partitions and a MBR will work on a USB drive (edit)and have it be bootable. In other words, goal 1 and goal 2 might not be achievable if goal 3 means that the disk will boot. I could be wrong.
Last edited by ewaller (2014-09-27 16:18:25)

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Luisa Montaini-Klovdahl, Ph.D.Licensed Psychologist &
Captain, US Army Reserves Medical Service Corps4153 Park Blvd
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Telephone: 650.384.6559
Facsimile: 650.384.6547 This e-mail may contain confidential patient information. If you have received this transmission in error, please delete and contact the sender.
From: aadeshs76610910 <[email protected]>
To: Luisa Montaini-Klovdahl <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2015 9:55 AM
Subject: Why does my Adobe Reader DC stop working when I click scroll down options?
Why does my Adobe Reader DC stop working when I click scroll down options?
created by aadeshs76610910 in Acrobat Reader - View the full discussionHi Luisa, Please follow the steps below :- 1) Uninstall Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. 2) Run the cleaning tool Download Adobe Reader and Acrobat Cleaner Tool - Adobe Labs3) Restart the computer.4) Install Adobe Acrobat Reader DC using this link Adobe Acrobat Reader DC Install for all versions Let me know if the issue persist. Regards,Aadesh If the reply above answers your question, please take a moment to mark this answer as correct by visiting: https://forums.adobe.com/message/7499212#7499212 and clicking ‘Correct’ below the answer Replies to this message go to everyone subscribed to this thread, not directly to the person who posted the message. To post a reply, either reply to this email or visit the message page: Please note that the Adobe Forums do not accept email attachments. If you want to embed an image in your message please visit the thread in the forum and click the camera icon: https://forums.adobe.com/message/7499212#7499212 To unsubscribe from this thread, please visit the message page at , click "Following" at the top right, & "Stop Following"
Start a new discussion in Acrobat Reader by email or at Adobe Community For more information about maintaining your forum email notifications please go to https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1516624.

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A thousand USB questions .. later why do USB devices not mount/stop working

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