[Q] usb thumbdrive not mounting

My first post, but I've been reading in this forum for two months, a couple hours each day. It's habit forming.

Gtab, tnt lite v.4.1.0

I have a USB adapter made by Sigg that has a 16gig microSD inserted. Formatted (several times) FAT32. When inserted in the gtab USB host slot the disk is not mounted without a lot of plugging and unplugging and praying to the gods. There have been a few messages telling me that the 'card is damaged' when it is not. The microSD card works fine when inserted in the gtab's microSD slot. But it can take hours of fiddling to get the card to mount in the USB slot.

After lots of searching it seems that everyone else takes USB flash drives on the gtab for granted. They all seem to work. Mine doesn't, but works fine in my XPpro 32bit laptop.

If anyone can give me some ideas for troubleshooting this I'd appreciate it.

By the way, this forum is something of a phenomenon. After looking at the gtab threads I went out and bought mine at Sears. What better way to get acquainted with Android? My thanks go out to everyone here who has contributed. Someday I might be able to contribute as well.

I think about ways to better manage the gtablet xda forum, a lot. It has become a monster - but it's not a bad monster, more like a cute and cuddly Sesame Street monster.

How to organize all this fabulous information so that it can be easily searched and utilized? Good question.

All I can say is - keep up the good work. This forum is a fantastic resource.

Thanks all

smalis, my question exactly!

Taking aaltieri's reply into consideration I experimented with a plain-jane thumbdrive, an adapter with a standard SD, and my adapter with the microSd. Others have demonstrated that adapters with more than one slot will not work. Both my adapters have one slot only.

So here's the intriguing results: The plain-jane thumbdrive is just as unreadable as both adapters UNLESS you boot the machine with the adapter/thumbdrive in the slot, then remove it and put it back in. Then they all read after a short detection period. BUT once the drives are removed after detection they cannot be read again until the machine is shut down and rebooted with the drive in, then remove it and put it back in for detection.

What we need is a method for mounting and unmounting USB drives. I've searched and cannot find a way to unmount the drive under tnt lite. It does not show up in settings/storage like the sd cards do.

By the way, the little Sigg adapter is very tiny, sticking out only 1/4" from the side of the gtab. I got it at Fry's Electronics for $6. I leave it in the slot full-time and it helps keep the power button from being activated when the gtab's inside it's sleeve. I use a Belkin 'non-slip' netbook sleeve (also at Fry's) and the gtab fits only slightly loose. I use a couple of ultrathin mouse pads/screen protectors, one on each side, to increase padding. The Belkin sleeve is difficult to drop due to the grippy sides. The ultrathin mouse pads are marketed for netbook use, to put under the lcd when closing the lid to protect the screen (also Fry's Electronics - what can I say, I'm hooked on the place).

The idea I had was to have 16gig in the SD slot and 16gig in the USB slot. The 32gig microSDHC's are cost prohibitive for me right now. And I still have 11gig remaining on the internal memory. I'd better get to work filling it . . .

A follow up for anyone interested.

I migrated to vegantab 5.1 to get mouse and keyboard functionality. I also loaded the small update to 5.1 that has sniffer included.

I don't think sniffer is much to write home about, but it does mount all the usb 2.0 drives and even all the multi-adapters that I've thrown at it. Some posts have pointed out that the multi-adapters don't work. But they do, at least in my experience. I used a Sony adapter that has sd, micro-sd, sony's memory stick, compact flash, and some other port. My 16gig compact flash cards from my camera are read without a problem AFTER opening sniffer. The iFile manager that comes with vegantab does not see the usb 2.0 or the adapter until sniffer is opened. Then the system sees the drives with no problem.

It works every time.

I decided to use an HP wireless mini keyboard. It's a perfect match for the gtab. I thought about dropping $80 for the new Verbatim folding bluetooth keyboard but the HP allows for much better touch typing and I need to do that. Best Buy has a cd/dcd carrying case made by Init that is essentially a hard case that fits the HP keyboard perfectly one the cd sleeves are removed. There's room under the keyboard for headphones, flash memory, and other odds and ends. With vegatab and the mouse fix, the keyboard is easily detected and the mouse pointer works great.

Anyway, it looks as if the mounting issue is one that can easily be taken care of with an app. Another more recent poster on this issue has noted that changing file managers allowed him to mount usb drives that iFileManager would not see. But sniffer works and it's there for seperate download if anyone wants it. I think it looks like crap and doesn't do much. I'll use it in the meantime, though.