USB drives

[Jesse Jarzynka]

green_man wrote:

> Is there any way in Linux to find out who manufactured a device ?
> I have a USB flash drive that works perfrectly with any one of the 
> several Knoppix/Debian based live Cds using the 2.4x kernels.
> I plug it in and it shows up in emelFM as sda1, and I can mount it, 
> read and write to it. Truly plug and play.
> However in Win 98SE, device manager wants a driver for it, but doesn't 
> have one.
> The vendors advice is go to the manufacturer's web site and download 
> the driver, but I have no idea who made the thing.
> All it says on the outside is "Flash Drive USB 2.0 128MB"
> It must be stored somewhere in the device, somehow, so that windows 
> knows what driver to look for.
>
> Also, since I am completely ignorant of how these things work, can 
> they be re-partitioned ?
> Could I take a 256 MB flash drive and split it into sda1 and sda2 of 
> 128 MB each, or is the format permanently set ?
>
This is perhaps the GREATEST benefit of hardware in Linux, as there are 
a number of ways. Either go into your graphical hardware browser in 
Gnome it's under System Tools. That usually gives a good description. 
Otherwise check out your dmesg when you plug the device in, it will give 
you a good little snippit about it. Or you can possibly try looking in 
your /proc/bus/usb directory. You should get a manufacturer and probably 
a chipset as well. Good luck! -Jesse