George Files

Windows, Ubuntu and a USB flash drive.

So a couple of days, I came into possession of a small USB drive. It’s one of those small things that can hold something like 125MB, and be carried around. I’m planning on putting Damn Small Linux on it and scaring a couple of my friends with a “Oh my god! I accidentally installed Linux on your computer and wiped out your Windows!” .So anyway, I wanted to try it out. On Ubuntu this is quite simple:

• ls /dev/sd*
  That bit was because I’d also tried out a digital camera that day, and so I didn’t want to mount the wrong drive (obviously!)
• sudo mount /dev/sda1 /drives/usb
  Since that was the only one there, it had to be my USB drive. I’d already made that folder there and a link to it from my home directory.

That was it. After that worked, I added it to my gkrellm drives krell and now it’s a one-touch mount/unmount. I still have to enter the sudo password, but I consider that a feature and I’m told I can remove it if I wanted.

On Windows 98SE, this was a little harder, in fact, had I not had Ubuntu, it would have been impossible. As soon as I plugged it in I got a message saying a new piece of hardware had been detected and that the computer was going to install drivers. The USB stick came with a little (literally, half the diameter of a normal disc) CD which was marked USB Flash Disk Driver. “Alright, this should be straightforward.”, I said to myself. I was wrong. When I went through the whole search routine (with both that Internet and the CD option enabled) Windows gave me a “couldn’t find the driver” dialog.

Fine, I may not know the intricacies of the system, but I know of the magical “Have Disk…” option hidden away somewhere. So I got there, and when I tried to open the relevant folder on the disc, I got a “Folder doesn’t exist” message. This was ridiculous! I couldn’t open anything on that little disc. I did the standard reboot, no help. The eject CD, adjust position, reinsert didn’t work either.

Now, a little annoyed, I rebooted to Ubuntu, and opened the CD, and strangely enough, I could see every folder. So I copied the contents onto my hard disc, then onto my FAT partition, then rebooted to Windows, and used the drivers. Finally, I was done. I could use it!

PS: Windows still doesn’t open the Driver CD, Ubuntu still does.

Posted by roshan.george under Ubuntu |