10.04: problems with flash drive and harddrive

[thomz92]

hi all,

i just recently installed ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my ibm thinkpad t43 laptop. Its great, but i have some problems. First of all, the usb ports dont work. I tried a flash drive but it didn't open. The light on the flash drive turned on, and that was all. Secondly, my hard drive light stays on (unblinking) as soon as the desktop is loaded and stays that way. I think it turns off eventually but not for at least 10 minutes.

neither of these things have happened before with 9.10. anyone else have these problems or know how to fix them?

[dracayr]

can you mount the flash drive manually? (Do
sudo mkdir /mnt/flash
sudo mount /dev/*flash drive* /mnt/flash
*flash drive* will be something like sdb1 or sdc1.. look for the highest letter after sd that isn't listed when you type
mount

dracayr

[thomz92]

awright i managed to mount the flash drive even though it seems to detect it as an external hardrive, but i can live with that. Now the other problem...the harddrive light is constantly on. Im worried im going to burn something out. this didn't happen with 9.10. is this a problem with ubuntu or my laptop?

[tgalati4]

There are read-ahead features in Lucid that can increase performance, but increase hard drive activity.

There are also new databases to be created and indexing that occurs with a new install.

Otherwise you couldn't run these commands:

which which
apropos apropos
apropos which
locate locate
locate which
locate apropos

So, yes, your hard drive will be busy for a while.

[thomz92]

So, yes, your hard drive will be busy for a while.

its not just a "while" though. it stays on for i'd estimate about 10 minutes. this never happened with any other operating system that was on this laptop, including ubuntu 9.10. It also does not happen on my desktop which also has 10.04 installed. so something is wrong here, but i'm not sure what

[Mmike]

its not just a "while" though. it stays on for i'd estimate about 10 minutes. this never happened with any other operating system that was on this laptop, including ubuntu 9.10. It also does not happen on my desktop which also has 10.04 installed. so something is wrong here, but i'm not sure what

There is utility called iotop that could help you in determining exact process that is 'utilizing' your hard drive(s).

[kaginken]

I have the same problem - ubuntu 10.04 only, never had this problem before with any earlier version. Very disturbing to see my hard disk light solid green all the time. I installed iotop, and it shows nothing out of the ordinary, an occasional 38kb i/o from something like my browser, etc. The rest of the time it's actually 0.00 kb. So, that's good that my hard drive isn't actually being read/write to that much, but the problem is really that I won't know when it IS having i/o. As I wrote this, it actually stopped. Hmmm...weird. I'll come repost next time it happens.

[drew_t]

My Thinkpad R52 is doing the same thing - HDD light solid green for quite some time after startup. I can't hear the drive actually doing anything. The light goes off eventually.

[Denny Johnson]

My flash drive is not detected after 10.04 install.
I ran the 3 commands suggested by dracayr in the 2nd post.
Can someone please tell me what to do next? How to open the flash drive? No icon on the desktop and no sign of it in Places/Computer
Thanks

[greybot]

Solid green light on my ibm thinkpad t30 now for over 10 minutes and no sign of it going off. Nothing out of the ordinary in System resources and can't hear my hard drive spinning.

[DFarmerTX]

Just noticed this with my T43p running 10.04. This just started happening with the last round of updates. Light stays on constantly, no actual disk or CPU activity.

I suspected this was just something I messed up, so I reinstalled from the 10.04 LTS alternate cd. It was fine after install, but once update-manager was finished (and the updates were installed), the light stays on.

Also, the DVD drive light stays on.

This doesn't happen until a few seconds after I log into the desktop.

How can I troubleshoot this?

Added: The light does go off after about 10 minutes.

[David.Johnson]

Just noticed this with my T43p running 10.04. This just started happening with the last round of updates. Light stays on constantly, no actual disk or CPU activity.

I suspected this was just something I messed up, so I reinstalled from the 10.04 LTS alternate cd. It was fine after install, but once update-manager was finished (and the updates were installed), the light stays on.

Also, the DVD drive light stays on.

This doesn't happen until a few seconds after I log into the desktop.

How can I troubleshoot this?

Added: The light does go off after about 10 minutes.

Just wanted to confirm this happens as well on my t43p. The light eventually turns off - maybe it's 10 minutes or so. Quick examination doesn't show anything weird going on with the HD - iotop showed no excessive writes, top showed no processes going crazy.

It's not such a bother, but I happen to have a bunch of t43p laptops I'd like to put Ubuntu on & don't want to hear from the users :) Any ideas?