I'm Stumped, teacher in need

[Daveway]

My teacher is new to macs and she said that she cannot get her flash drive to work. She said that when she plugs it in her emac that it doesn't show up on her desktop or in the finder. But, when she unplugs it the device removal error comes up.
I have no idea how this could be. I told her to go to disk utility and see if it shows up there. I don't remember but I think I remember her saying it doesn't show up on her Windows pc either.

Any help is needed. My grades might be on there!

Note: she plugged it in her Mac first.

 

[jsw]

Not at my Mac, so I forget the details, but you can set up prefs in Finder as to whether or not to show various devices (like network drives, CDs, etc.) in the Finder; presumably, the flash drive is another option. I'd be surprised if she's unable to see it in a Finder window at least (as opposed to on the Desktop).

 

[tutubibi]

Most likely, drive is not partitioned or formatted in any format OSX or Windows can understand. I had this case with ext2 linux formatted flash drive.

If you can see it in Disk Utility, just create and format FAT partition.

 

[psycho bob]

Seeif it shows up in disk utility which can be found in the utilities folder inside applications. Also tell her to go to finder > preferences and check that under the general tab all the options are ticked for items to appear on the desktop.
If it does appear in disk utility but still not in the finder then format it in the FAT format so both the mac and Windows machines can read it.

 

[cpjakes]

Sometimes that happens with my camera when I connect it. You might be able to see it if you open Terminal and type "ls /Volumes"

If there is one called "Untitled" or something like that (i.e. something not mounted like "Macintosh HD" then you can type "open /Volumes/<insert volume name here>" and it should open in a Finder window.

Otherwise, try formatting it with Disk Utility as previously mentioned.

cpjakes

 

[Daveway]

She told me today hat it doesn't show up in disk utility. She said she plugged her brother-in-law's flash drive and that one didn't show either.
Shes upset because it was a $100 drive and its not working.

I thought OS X can read most volumes?

 

[Horrortaxi]

Is she plugging it into the keyboard? I've heard of the odd flash drive that requires more power than the keyboard can provide. See if plugging it straight into the computer gets it to mount.

 

[cpjakes]

There's also the slight chance that it will work in OS 9, or at least be seen as an unreadable volume to initialize. I've seen some off brand USB flash readers that don't work natively in OS X but do in OS 9.

cpjakes