i thought $mount/dev/sda1 or something else might work....but it doesn't in my Mandrake 10.Infact theres nothing called sda0,sda1 or whatever in my /dev.How do i do it in Mandrake 10 ?

Check to see if /dev/sda is existant. If it isn't, then Mandrake isn't detecting something. It could be it doesn't have the correct usb modules loaded, or maybe you're usb drive needs a special driver. Look at /var/log/messages and see if it detects your drive after you insert it.

You need scsi support as well as usb-storage compiled-in or modules loaded. I've not used Mandrake so I can't tell you what you should have out-of-the-box.

I had one usb stick that required me to mount /dev/sda - not sda1 like all the others.

It's possible just the inodes in /dev are missing, but you'll have to ask someone with Mandrake experience what you should do to fix that. (Does it use devfs? or do you need to manually make them?)

mandrake has the modules built-in out of the box, you just need to 'modprobe usb-storage', if I remember correctly. If that doesn't work, you can always try to check your logs, and see if something has gone wrong.

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you just need to 'modprobe usb-storage', if I remember correctly.

That's odd. I remember when I had Mandrake 9.1 I didn't have to do anything to get my usb stick working. All I had to do was "mount /dev/sda1".

Well, you can just have it auto-detect, but if that doesn't work, sometimes manual kernel module installation works. If that doesn't work, try changing the order of USB devices, sometimes computers are damn picky about where USB devices are, or just try plugging it in after the boot, and install the kernel module for a USB drive.