Pen drive not detecting in Ubuntu12.04

[Nils Kassube]

digambar padulkar wrote:
> I am having Transcend Pendrive of 8GB, when I open it under windows
> it shows the drive, when try to add some files to it it shows its
> write protected. 

I suppose it is write protected if it wasn't cleanly unmounted. Then you 
should run chkdisk (or whatever it is called nowadays in Windows).

> When I open it in Ubuntu 12.04 its not detecting
> the device, but when I use command "sudo fdisk -l" it shows
> following
[...]
> Disk /dev/sdb: 8049 MB, 8049917952 bytes*
[...]
> This doesn't look like a partition table
> Probably you selected the wrong device.

My guess is that the device uses a GUID partition table [1] and fdisk 
doesn't understand it. From "man fdisk":

| fdisk  does not understand GUID partition tables (GPTs) and it is not
| designed for large partitions. In these cases, use the more advanced
| GNU parted(8).

You could check it with gparted (or parted if you prefer the command 
line).


Nils

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table>