USB thumb drive not mounting

[suku]

Hi,

I have 10.4.11, the problem i am facing is that on my MAC when i connect any USB thumb drive it is not showing me in finder or anywhere else. I have checked every setting(s). Bluetooth is working fine keyboard and mouse are good it is only the 3rd USB port which is not working also USB ports on Keyboard are not recognizing any USB device.
My idea is that it has stopped USB from mounting at startup, hence I am not able to view when i connect any thumb drive. My guess of what someone has done is he used diskutil unmount command.. and the big thing is that i am not very much familiar with terminal commands.
So any idea how to mount stop that unmounting process from occurring or mount USB at startup. Please assist.

[hughvane]

Have you used Disk Utility to check the format of the thumb drive (td)? If the td shows up in Disk Utility, but not on desktop, then you should reformat the td with either HFS or MS-DOS, then see if it will mount to desktop on insertion.

[Collin Bl]

Seems some units are pre loaded with Microsoft password protection - take it to a mate with a PC and get it reformatted, then it should show in the Mac

[dtravis7]

Also never plug a USB drive (Thumb or otherwise) into the Keyboards USB ports. Not enough power.

[suku]

I have already thried that when i insert USB it doesn't shows up in Disk Utility, and nowhere else. please advise if there is any command to mount or unmount USB during startup. I guess that's what somebody has done.

PLEASE HELP

[hughvane]

Where has this thumb drive been? I mean, how many people on what sort of OS have been using it? If it's been used to share material amongst several people, then anything might have happened to it. It could be that the drive itself has simply failed.

Collin has given you good advice about using a WinOS computer to check if the drive is still working. If not, and the data on the td is not of great importance, treat yourself to a new drive, they're cheap enough.

[suku]

Got your point boss, but the point is the drive is working on my second Imac, My second machine is detecting that same drive and its not windows computer its just another Imac with 10.4.11 so there is nothing wrong with USB drive. even this mac is not detecting new one. Now any suggestions.

[baggss]

Have you tried the thumb drive in the other USB ports? You have not told us. Since we know 2 of them work with the KB/MSE, try one of those ports and see what happens.

[hughvane]

Well spotted baggss! Yes, the OP stated that it's only USB Port 3 that isn't working [I missed that - smack!]. To Suku, try swapping the other devices, eg. keyboard and mouse about, using either of them in Port 3.

As far as the terminal command 'diskutil unmount' is concerned, and dealing with the simpler things first, try reformatting the flash drive using your other Mac. You could preserve the contents of the drive to the other Mac as well.

If USB Port 3 continues not to respond to anything inserted, then we're looking at hardware repair. It's possible that could be achieved with Disk Utility from the original Install disk 1.