Novice - Viewing USB flash drive in File Manager

[zaracat]

Really simple question, sorry!

Bought a Pi2B for my 8yo daughter a week ago and slightly regretting it as I am totally out of my depth.

We have some Scratch projects which were done on my laptop in Scratch 1.4. All I want to do is get these across so that we can open them on the Pi.

I thought the simplest way would be to put them on a USB stick and open that in the Pi. However, when I go in the GUI and open the FileManager PCManFM, I can't see anything from the USB stick. There is a folder called Media which has no files and a folder called MNT which has a sub-folder called USBEL but there are no files.

It feels like I am just not doing the right thing as I'm just not seeing the USB stick. I've checked the USB stick is FAT32. I've tried going to the Scatch website to access them from there instead but it won't work. The Pi2 is an entirely standard setup with out-of-box NOOBS SD card.

[FTrevorGowen]

If you "double-click" on /media/pi/ do you see a new sub-directory appear - something like:

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/media/pi/F58C-76EA/

?
For me "F58C-76EA" is the "label" of a usb-stick automatically generated from info. on the stick (ie. its UUID).
"Double-clicking" on that should take you to the files/file structure of the stick.
Or, from the command-line:

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pi@raspiJamesA8Gb ~ $ ls -laF /media/pi/F58C-76EA/
total 15700
drwx------  3 pi   pi      16384 Jan  1  1970 ./
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root     4096 Jan 24 16:58 ../
-rwxr-xr-x  1 pi   pi   16024600 Feb  5  2015 RunSanDiskSecureAccess_Win.exe*
drwx------  2 pi   pi      16384 May 22  2015 SanDiskSecureAccess/

Trev.

[zaracat]

There is nothing in the media file, no sub folders and no files?

[GTR2Fan]

Try changing the view in File Manager. See where it says Directory Tree with a down-arrow to the right of it? Try switching that to Places. It often makes things easier to find for a person more used to a Windows environment.

[zaracat]

Ican switch between places and the tree but I still don't see anything. It is as though the pi isn't registering that the USB stick is there. Ive switched on and off several times. I've tried a different USB stick but still no acknowledgement. I've tried saving the files on to my SD card also but I can't see them either in file manager when I reinsert the card in to the Pi.

[FTrevorGowen]

Ican switch between places and the tree but I still don't see anything. It is as though the pi isn't registering that the USB stick is there. Ive switched on and off several times. I've tried a different USB stick but still no acknowledgement. I've tried saving the files on to my SD card also but I can't see them either in file manager when I reinsert the card in to the Pi.

O.K. Let's take a step "backwards" (away from the File Manager) and check whether your USB stick(s) is(are) being detected...
In a terminal window (command line) what do the following commands report with and without a USB stick plugged in?

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lsusb

and

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ls -laF /dev/disk/by-uuid/

Also, for info, what does this report?

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uname -a

FWIW, compare with these examples:
W/o USB stick:

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pi@raspiJamesA8Gb ~ $ uname -a
Linux raspiJamesA8Gb 4.1.13-v7+ #826 SMP PREEMPT Fri Nov 13 20:19:03 GMT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux
pi@raspiJamesA8Gb ~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
pi@raspiJamesA8Gb ~ $ ls -laF /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  80 Jan 24 16:48 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 120 Jan 24 16:48 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  15 Jan 24 16:48 74BD-74CF -> ../../mmcblk0p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  15 Jan 24 16:48 ec2aa3d2-eee7-454e-8260-d145df5ddcba -> ../../mmcblk0p2

With USB stick:

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pi@raspiJamesA8Gb ~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0781:5571 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Fit
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
pi@raspiJamesA8Gb ~ $ ls -laF /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 100 Jan 24 16:55 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 120 Jan 24 16:48 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  15 Jan 24 16:48 74BD-74CF -> ../../mmcblk0p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  15 Jan 24 16:48 ec2aa3d2-eee7-454e-8260-d145df5ddcba -> ../../mmcblk0p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  10 Jan 24 16:55 F58C-76EA -> ../../sda1

Trev.

[Navyscourge]

What are you using as a power supply? Often a USB HDD is not 'seen' by the Pi if the power supply is not powerful enough, although it is not so common with USB sticks

[zaracat]

Many thanks trev. Unfortunately I have just left the house (and the pi!) as I am working away for a week, so there will likely be a delay in responding. Thanks again in the meantime.

[clearly_blurry]

Hi!

I'm having a very similar problem. Except I've used 2 USB's in it before. Lately, when I've been plugging it in to my windows 10 machine, it's been reporting an issue with the 2 USB's.

Today I decided to fix them both, but windows reported it couldn't find an actual error. Before fixing, one would continuously removing and incerting itself with the raspberry pi (not physically, obviously, and not with the Windows 10 machine). Let's call this USB2.

So I got annoyed and switched back to the other one, USB1. I was able to get my files off it (they're exact copies of each other), but now I can't find it in the file explorer. When I ran the code suggested I got back "no such file or directory" for each one. Apart from uname -a which gave me "Linux raspberry 4.9.59-v7+ #1047 SMP Sun Oct 29 12:19:23 GMT 2017 armv71 GNU/Linux". (I'm aware the date and time is off, I can never be bothered to change it)

I can see USB1 in the eject menu, but it's greyed out. The red light on the USB stick is also constantly on.

So I plugged USB2 back in, and I can see it in /media/pi and it went back to removing and inserting itself.

So I ejected USB2 and straightup pulled the other one out. I plugged them both into Windows 10. USB1 was in the wrong format, but 2 was working fine.

Any ideas? Should I mess with the formatting? Why has it changed?

I have a report due in 4 days and I really don't have time for this.