How to Access a Flash Drive on a Unix System
On a Unix (and Linux) operating system, a flash drive must be mounted before you can use it. Most modern Unix operating systems have an automount utility that will recognize and mount the drive automatically. If the automount utility is turned off, or if it fails, you can still access the drive by manually mounting the drive. The drive will be mounted into a directory that can be accessed through the desktop file manager or through the command line.
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Instructions
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Automount
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Insert the flash drive into a USB slot on your computer.
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Open a terminal window.
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Type the command "df" to view the location where the flash drive is mounted. The line you are interested in will look like: "/dev/sdb1 247988 65808 182180 27% /media/usbdrive". You can access the drive by opening the "/media/usbdrive/" directory, either through the desktop file manager or from the command line.
Manual Mount
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Insert the flash drive into the USB slot on your computer.
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Open a terminal window.
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Type the command "tail /var/log/messages" to locate the device name for the flash drive. The output you are interested in will look like:
"Mar 2 16:27:16 hostname kernel: [20165.153132] sdb: sdb1
Mar 2 16:27:16 hostname kernel: [20165.183219] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk"According to this output, the device is located at "sdb1". The full device name will be "/dev/sdb1".
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Type the command "su" to switch to the root user.
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Type the command "mkdir /media/usbdrive" to create a mount location for the flash drive.
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Type the command "mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdrive" to make the drive accessible. You can now access the drive by opening the "/media/usbdrive/" directory through the desktop file manager or from the command line.
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References
- Photo Credit flash drive image by AndreyPS from Fotolia.com
