# USB "Pen drive" "cannot read boot sector&quot

## darkangael

When inserting my USB pen drive (Super Talent Flash Inc. brand, every site selling it claims it will work in linux), I cannot mount the drive and I get this in my logs

```

Aug 22 18:25:37 [kernel] hub.c: new USB device 00:10.3-6, assigned address 14

Aug 22 18:25:37 [kernel] hub.c: USB hub found

Aug 22 18:25:37 [kernel] hub.c: 1 port detected

Aug 22 18:25:38 [kernel] hub.c: new USB device 00:10.3-6.1, assigned address 15

Aug 22 18:25:38 [kernel] usb.c: USB device 15 (vend/prod 0x67b/0x2517) is not claimed by any active driver.

Aug 22 18:25:40 [/etc/hotplug/usb.agent] Setup usbcore for USB product 67b/2515/1

                - Last output repeated twice -

Aug 22 18:25:41 [/etc/hotplug/usb.agent] Setup usb-storage for USB product 67b/2517/1

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel] scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel]   Vendor: STFI USB  Model: 2.0 Flash Disk    Rev: P1.0

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel] Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel] SCSI device sda: 256000 512-byte hdwr sectors (131 MB)

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel] sda: Write Protect is off

Aug 22 18:25:41 [kernel]  p1 p2 p3 p4

Aug 22 18:26:02 [kernel] Device 08:01 not ready.

Aug 22 18:26:02 [kernel] FAT: unable to read boot sector

```

Any ideas?

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## kronon

Maybe the partitions on the device are all wrong. I recently tried to make my stick work unther linux and after some time I realized it already worked, but that I some how messed up my partitions using cfdisk. When I partitiond it unther xp it worked very wel. 

I also noticed that you have a strange nr of memeory on your stick, supporting my bad partitions theory.

>> SCSI device sda: 256000 512-byte hdwr sectors (131 MB)

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## darkangael

could be. Works in windows, so most likely stuffed partitons(as if windows would care if anything was wrong  :Razz: ). I might try repartitioning it then. Thanks for the idea (i originally discounted the idea because it workedi n windows, but your comment on the size gave me the idea it might still be it  :Wink: 

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## darkangael

Nope, cfdisk gives me a nice message saying "FATAL ERROR: cannot read disk drive" when I use it on /dev/sda. The usb drive is the only device using scsi (except the cdrom, which I understand does not use sdx at all but another name) and all the usb drivers are installed. Scsi disk and scsi generic support is built into the kernel etc. 

(ps I have tried it on 2 machines so far with same result)

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## darkangael

tried it in another guy's computer and it works. He also cannot get his (different brand) to work on any machin but his laptop and his desktop. He knows a guy who gets the same brand to work on every machine BUT the laptop and the desktop. Wierd

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## nephros

You might find this thread interesting:

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0309.3/0082.html

Apparantly the kernel sometimes has probems figuring out if an USB drive has a partition table or not.

According to this, and some other thread here, trying to mount /dev/sda instead of sda1 works sometimes.

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## darkangael

That doesn't work. This doesn't even get to the stage where it can even see if there is a partition table on there. The kernel spits out a whole bunch of i/o errors and device not ready messages into the logs whenever you try to do anything, including using partition management software or even dd if=/dev/sda

Thanks anyway though  :Very Happy: 

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