OS refuses to mount external USB flash drive. Says a piece of OS software is missing.

OS refuses to mount external USB flash drive. Says a piece of OS software is missing. The flash drive (thumb drive) usually lights up but does not go through the flashing on/off that was tyjpical when first inserting it.
I tried an external hard drive and got the same results; that is, no result, as if it wasn't connected. No icon appears on the desktop and no device shows up in the sidebar. It (10.6.8, Mac Pro Duo) had worked perfectly before this, of course.

Hmmmmm,,,,
Disconnected all peripherals. Did a Safe Mode startup and that worked fine. Very limited features, of course.
Started up with the Snow Leopart (10.6.3) disk. Used disk utility to verify permissions and ran disk repair on all three internal HDs. No repairs needed.
Ran Drive Genius and did the same things, as a double-check.
Plugged in the flash drive (thumb drive) and it came up fine (still operating the OS from the Sno-Leop disk).
I wanted to re-start with the disk and bring up the Apple Hardware Test as you suggested. I had lots of kernal panics on a previous machine, a G4 desktop, and has used that at that time (with a 10.2 or 10.4 disk). thought I remembered that you hold the D key down when starting up from the disk and it would open the hardware test, but either I remember wrong or it works different in 10.6 because it was just a normal startup.
How do I get to the Hardware Test on the 10.6 Snow Leopard disk?
Restarted without the disk and the Mac Pro desktop still showed the gray screen with what Apple calls the "prohibitory" sign, the circle with the diagonal line in it.
I decided to load the OS disk onto HD 3 and designate that as the startup disk, which I did and it works fine. The USB flash drive loads properly, opens, etc. just as it should. I haven't yet plugged in the peripherals (scanner, printer, second DVD/CD recorder, tablet, an external drive, or connected to ethernet yet. Will do those one at a time and see if any of them casued a problem.)
Am I right in thinking:
A) HD One might have bad sections. I didn't defrag with Drive Genius (26% fragged) or look for bad blocks, which I'll probably do tonight.
or B) the OS has been slightly corrupted and may need reloading
or C) I have a virus or conflict (though I haven't added anything new lately). I do have the ButtonManager loading problem for Mac. which is talked about on MacRumors site, etc. but the timing of its appearance and this problem don't match.
Apologies for being so wordy; want to get all information that may be helpful. I appreciate your interest.

Similar Messages

10.5.1: Unable to mount a USB flash drive.

I've seen this problem posted elsewhere, but so far I have yet to see a solution:
After upgrading my MacBook Pro to 10.5.1, it can no longer mount USB flash drives. They show up in System Profiler as well as the USB Probe tool, but do not show up in Disk Utility (and, obviously, not on the Desktop or listed in /Volumes).
I checked the drives on a co-worker's MBP, also running 10.5, and the problem persisted there. The drives mount and work fine under 10.4, as well as various flavors of Windows. When plugged into the MBPs, the status LEDs light up, so they are getting power, and mice plugged into the USB ports work fine.
So, the problem seems to be specific to mounting a USB flash drive in 10.5/10.5.1. I'm not sure if this is specific to MacBook Pros, or if the issue is the same on all 10.5 machines.
Any help would be appreciated.

I have the USB problem. When I insert my USB memory pen, it flashes then stops. The icon doesn't come up on the Desktop, but the memory shows up on the System Profiler.
My USB telephone responds in Skype, but the sound input and output don't show up in Preferences, and so the phone doesn't work.
My Vodaphone USB internet modem won't connect.
This morning, I have no sound at all.
All these problems are resolved if the computer is restarted with the external source already plugged in, but it's a big hassle and must be solvable............

Mount a USB flash drive from a shell

I am about six months new to Linux; I have installed my first arch system but not yet installed a desktop environment. I am trying to mount a USB flash drive from the shell but I am not having much luck. I have tried following the instructions in the archwiki, http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_Storage_Devices. I am having a problem with the following command:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick
I get an error message saying that the mount point does not exist. I have in the /mnt directory the following:
cd cdrom dvd fd0 f1
(I am not sure what fd0 and fl are, if somebody could please tell me I would appreciate it. Also I do not have a DVD-ROM on my computer is the dvd listed by default or do I have a package installed I do not need?) I did some searching online and came across the following site, http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2007/ … -from.html. I followed the instructions to identify the correct partition name corresponding to the USB drive by running the following command:
grep SCSI /var/log/messages.log
and I get the following results:
Dec 30 22:16:17 morgan-desktop scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage divices
Dec 30 22:16:22 morgan-desktop sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
The next steps in the instructions are to mount the partition to the existing mount point (directory) by using the following command.
mkdir -p /mnt/myusb
mount -t vfat -o rw,users /dev/sda1 /mnt/myusb
This is where I am having a problem, I do not understand the results and how to proceed to the next step, please help me.
One other small question what is the best command to shut down the computer as a normal user?
Thank you
Morgan Smith

Ok, Lots of different advice here, let's see if I can explain it all together, and clear up a few bits...
I'll try to explain why I'm saying what I am, it doesn't matter if you don't follow it all, commands are below.
You are on the right lines here, but a few things missing. Firstly, to mount the USB stick you are using the correct command, but the locations are a problem. The command is "mount -t type what/to/mount where/to/mount". You can find out more about the mount command with "mount --help" or "man mount"
You have correctly identified type as vfat - this means the pen is formated as FAT.
To find out what to mount, you can check /var/log/messages.log, the second command you posted searches trough that file and prints out lines including the phrase SCSI, and the result tells you that a usb storage device had been attached as sdb, so the correct device is /dev/sdb1. Storage devices are named sda sdb sdc etc in the order they are attached, and the numbers refer to the partitions on the disk.
You can mount it anywhere you want, as any existing directory, but the one you tried to use /mnt/usbstick doesn't exist, so create it, using mkdir.
The commands you need therefore are:
mkdir /mnt/usbstick
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbstick
This will work as root. There is also, as byte said, a program called pmount (which you can get with pacman -S pmount) which works the same way for a standard user.
Finally, there are also a number of tools like HAL which can be used to automate the process.
As for shutting down, as has been said you must be root or in the power group, then you can use 'halt' 'poweroff' 'reboot' or 'shutdown'. All have slightly different effects, and poweroff is probably the easiest.
Hope this helps
Jack

In start disc mode can I use a external USB flash drive on MAC Book Pro

In start disc mode can I use a external USB flash drive on MAC Book Pro?

To do what? Yes you can connect a USB flash drive to the system and if it has the Recovery HD files on it you can boot from it. If it has the OS X install files on it you can boot from it. If it is large enough to contain a Time Machine backup on it you can restore your system from it.
So what do you want to do with the USB thumb drive?
Roy02649 wrote:
In start disc mode can I use a external USB flash drive on MAC Book Pro?

External USB drive wont mount but USB Flash Drive Wll?

I have an external usb hard drive formatted to NTFS. When I plug it in it shows up in my file manager as New Volume.
When I click on it I get an error message that says
"Cannot get volume fstype alternative"
I have made changes to PolicyKit and it didnt fix it.
I also have a Corsair Flash Drive that has no problem mounting and I can access it without errors.
I dont have a clue how to fix it since one works and the other doesnt.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Last edited by ziegen (2009-06-07 02:22:15)

Have you got ntfs-3g installed?

Mount a USB Flash Drive

I am running a 1998 iMac with a PowerPC Processor. It has MacOS 8.5.1. I have a PNY 2 GB USB Flash Drive. How do I mount this.

The link says it won't work with G3(which is what I have).
Where does it say that? Both the 8.6 update and the USB Mass Storage Support 1.3.5 are OK for a 1998 iMac (with 8.5.1 right now). Since the USB Mass Storage Support 1.3.5 requires 8.6, install that update first.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the only means of transporting data is through a CD(which I can burn).
Yes, you can transfer files on a CD. Use a CD-R (not CD-RW).
If you are using a PC for the downloads, make sure that the files are kept unaltered. Do not try to decode the MacBinary (.bin) on the PC. Once on the iMac, use an appropriate version of StuffIt Expander (which, hopefully, is there already) for the decoding (drag the .bin file onto the StuffIt Expander program icon). Otherwise, special software (such as TransMac) will be needed on the PC in order to correctly handle Mac files.
The iMac is not connected to the internet.
If necessary, that can be resolved within minutes. The iMac has a built-in modem for a dial-up connection, or it can be connected to a broadband router by means of an RJ-45 Ethernet cable.
Jan

Mounting external USB CD drive on Mac Book Pro

Hi all,
Hoping you can help.
My late 2008 MacBook Pro has been near bulletproof for me however the one weakspot (besides old OS) is the CD drive.
It can function, intermittantly, but not reliably enough for me to install my new Snow Leopard CD and upgrade the IOS.
So I have been trying to mount an external USB CD Drive - the MacBook Air Superdrive.
I can see it in the System Profiler, it draws 500 mA current, which apparently is all it requires.
However I cannot see it in Disk Utility.
I hear it move and power up on reboot, but the CD drive simply never mounts. It should mount, there is a CD I've accidentally left in there.
'tis very annoying.
Is there any way to get this external CD drive mounted properly?
Appreciate any assistance you can offer.
Many thanks...

Which drive?
In the built in drive, I can occasionally insert a CD and it will mount and read okay, but most of the time it simply spits the CD out - it also does this with CDs it has played happily with for a while (such as my Snow Leopard CD which I've been trying to install from ;P )
In the external drive, yes, there is a CD in there, however it was in there from when I had the CD drive plugged into my Mac mini server (server now broken, so ejecting CD is difficult - that's a whole other kettle of fish...)
I don't understand why Apple System Profiler can see the external CD drive, and it reports no issues, but yet Disk Utility does not.
Do I need to find a way of disabling the built in drive somehow before OS X will recognise a different CD drive?

How to mount fat32 usb flash drive on 10.6.8?

Hello there,
I've read many posts about this problem but they don't work for me.
I've a Kingstone flash drive 16GB that I use mainly to record videos from a Digital terrestrial tuner box or to watch vieos from internet on my videoprojector.
It used to work fine, then I re formatted it on the DTV box and recorded a couple of programs with the tuner and they show up correctly, but once connected to my iMac mid2011 usb port or MBPro I'm asked to initialize the drive or ignore, eject.
- It doesn't show up in DiskUtility.
- It does show up in System Profiler:
DT R500:
Capacity:    15.99 GB (15,988,686,848 bytes)
Removable Media:    Yes
Detachable Drive:    Yes
BSD Name:    disk1
Product ID:    0x1654
Vendor ID:    0x0951 (Kingston Technology Company)
Version:     1.00
Serial Number:
Speed:    Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer:    Kingston
Location ID:    0xfd130000 / 6
Current Available (mA):    500
Current Required (mA):    300
Partition Map Type:    MBR (Master Boot Record)
S.M.A.R.T. status:    Not Supported
Volumes:
Capacity:    15.99 GB (15,988,654,080 bytes)
Writable:    Yes
BSD Name:    disk1s1
- It does show up with mount command in Terminal:
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *16.0 GB    disk1
   1:             Windows_FAT_32                         16.0 GB    disk1s1
- Tried to make a dir and then mount but with no success:
sh-3.2# mount -t msdos /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/Kingstone/
mount_msdos: /dev/disk1s1 on /Volumes/Kingstone: Invalid argument
I just need to copy the recorded files and then format again the flash drive.
Any suggestion?
Thank you in advance!
Piero

"DTV box may not have formatted properly" --> I'd suspect something like that too...
FAT32 is limited to file size of 4GB actually (minus one byte).
In my experience you can copy a larger file to a FAT32 volume, let's say a video file, but when the copying process is finished, you notice the size is 4GB, and when you play the video it ends abruptly at this point.
(another limit is limited file name length and limited use of characters in the filename. A slash for instance is not allowed.)
Piero, did you try to connect your flash drive to a windows machine?

Mounting External USB Hard Drive

Probably been asked a million time but I've searched the manual and database and haven't been able to solve my problem.
I have a new Airport Extreme dual band). It has a direct ethernet connection to my main iMac. Everything fine. Am trying to attach a Seagate 1.5TB USB FreeAgent Drive. I've got it hooked up. It shows up in the Airport Utility b ut I can't for the life of me seem to be able to get it to mount. Eventually I want to use it as my TimeMachine Drive.
Any suggestions much appreciated.

I had forgotten about the partitioning issue with hard drives for Time Machine.
Again my lack of knowledge about "servers" makes me ask the questions:
1) Can I partition the drive while it is attached as a server or should I hook it up directly to my Mac.
2) If I remember correctly the drive needs to be formatted as journaled. I thought this was different than HFS+. Also I can give it a single partition correct?
Again thanks

How to mount USB Flash Drive

Hello again Arch-Linux users,
I always search google very hard and for months (off and on) I search for how to mount a USB Flash Drive. Nothing ever work so I give up than try again months latter. I don't want to give up anymore and that is why I join this forum.
Here are some of the code I found on the net. Some of these commands will only re-mount the entire Arch-Linux running system in /mnt/usbstick.
sudo mount -o rw,noauto,async,user,umask=1000 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick
... don't work it only re-mount the entire system
/dev/sda15 /mnt/usbstick vfat user,noauto,unhide 0 0
... don't work... I found nothing inside /mnt/usbstick
mount -t vfat -o rw,nosuid,nodev,quiet,shortname=mixed,uid=1001,gid=100,umask=077,iocharset=utf8 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick
... don't work... here is the error i get:
mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /mnt/usbstick busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /
It strange that most USB mount commands use the operating system partition itself- example: /dev/sda1 as the device for USB device, while others use /dev/cdrom for cd - /dev/dvd for dvd and /dev/fd0 for floppy.
Could someone post the code that will easily mount a usb device under Arch_Linux.
I'm using Arch-Linux core-64 (08-2009)
Thanks in advance
Last edited by sharris (2010-06-17 21:58:43)

Thanks fsckd,
I needed a rapid reply because I been wasting too much time not getting anything done because I needed to get pass this flash-drive thing. I can now have a secure back-up in my pocket on USB to go. Arch-Linux does it better for what I seen while just dd'ing on disk.
...lsusb
Found it
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org … susb8.html
Thanks demian,
sdb is the location for my single hard-drive machine. I saw it before in my list above but I changed it to sda1 because I knew no better. I had no clue it represent a 2nd hard-drive for LINUX if one is not already present.
This did it for me
Thanks again

None of my usb flash drives are mounting

OS X 10.6.8 - None of my usb flash drives are mounting. They don't show up in disk utility either. System proflier does show the flash drives. I've run disk warrior and the flash drives show there as well. I've tried all of the usb outlets with several flash drives and none of them show up. I can use the same usb outlets to use my wireless keyboard, mouse and also my ipad.
Finders preferences are all checked to show items on desktop.
One of my flash drives I tried several times and finally got this screen message. "System extension cannot be used The system extension "/System/Library/Extension/IOStorageFamily.Kext" was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product's vendor for an update. Non of my other 6 flash drives mount and they do not receive any screen message.
I've also run repair disk permissions several times and the it says permissions repaired so I run it again and the same issued it said it was repaired, it lists again. I've done this several times with the same results.

Hello
from that
"System extension cannot be used The system extension "/System/Library/Extension/IOStorageFamily.Kext" was installed improperly and cannot be used"
try this
- boot from your original system disc
- plug one of your usb flash drives
- see if installer software could use usb flash drives as target for install
( testing your usb flash drive from a know good system software )
- DO not perform install on flash drive , just need to know if flash is usable
if it could , re-install your system or if it was updated from a previous version re-install 10.6.8 combo update
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
checking for any missing update ?
HTH
Pierre

Can't open folders in usb flash drive

hello, i'm a new chromebook user, serial #XXXXXXXXX . i have a serious problem using an external usb flash drive. the files i have there are all in folders, and when i connect the drive the computer simply refuses to open them! i click and double click and nothing, and without accessing the folders i obviously can't open my files.
help please!
[Moderator edit to remove serial number.]

If you can't solve your issue and no one in the community can help, contact support to speak with a tech support agent at (800) 457-7777.
- Peter

Time Maching backup and USB flash drives problem with TC

I have a time capsule that is currently backing up my computer for the first time. I want to add a USB hub to the USB port so I can add my flash drives and setup a printer wirelessly. I plugged in one of my flash drives into the USB port and a folder popped up that was titled "NO NAME". Is there any reason why TC isn't recognizing this as a disk and letting me move files to/from the flash drive. Additionally, is there anyway to backup the day-to-day Time Machine files to the flash drives instead of to the TC, or would this not be recommended?
Thanks to all who can help!

I have successfully mounted a USB flash drive but had to first reformat and name it using Disk utility. I am also using a USB hub with an external 750G drive attached through the USB hub.

How to use USB flash drive in XFCE?

Hello,
How to mount/unmount USB flash drive in XFCE?
Thanks for your help,
Anand

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AutoFS_HowTo might be interesting

Udisks2: mount only usb flash

Hello, Arch users!
How can I configure udisks2 to permit mounting only usb flash drives and similiar for users in "storage" group, not internal drives?
Here are the contents of my /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/10-storage-group-mount-override.pkla:
[storage group mount override]
Identity=unix-group:storage
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system
ResultAny=no
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes
Or I must create another group "storage-flashonly" for this and configure something for it?
My use-case: I want to protect guest users from mounting my windows partitions, but allow them automounting of their usb flash drives.
Any thoughts aprreciated.
Last edited by dontbugme (2012-05-26 02:28:00)

Change Action line from
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system
to
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount
and it will be mount only removable devices, internal drives won't be mounted

OS refuses to mount external USB flash drive. Says a piece of OS software is missing.

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