Can you unplug and plug back one of your usb drives and then select from the menu GParted -> Refresh Devices, and then see if the dropdown works?
Also, please provide the output of sudo lsusb with a usb drive plugged-in.
You mentioned you installed Zorin some time back. Were you able to access your usb drives in Zorin after you installed it? If you were able to and this only happened recently, do you recall any changes made to your system?
The dropdown still does nothing.
I believe this is the first time I’ve tried to access USB drives since I installed Zorin. I’ve been going through old equipment recently and wanted to transfer picture files from the Seagate FreeAgent onto my 1TB hard drive for sorting. I started by checking to see what’s on the thumb drive, and that’s when I found that I couldn’t view any of them.
Thank you for spending so much time trying to figure this mess out for me.
Happy to help.
Try the selected answer here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/318987/ubuntu-doesnt-see-external-usb-hard-disk
I’m afraid that solution doesn’t work. Here are the results without and then with the devices being connected:
Can you try disconnecting one or more of your USB devices (lsusb listed several) and seeing if that makes a difference in recognizing your storage drives? Probably won’t but the reason I ask is that I had a similar experience on my wife’s desktop, albeit when it was running Win 7. It used to be able to recognize a limited number of USB devices. Fiddling with BIOS settings alleviated the problem a little. Granted you’re on Zorin and I have so far not encountered the same issue on Zorin but it’s worth a try.
Additionally, I believe your Win 7 still recognizes USB drives, correct? You can access the windows partitions directly from Zorin (just browse to them from Files -> Other Locations). You can copy any files you want backed-up to your Windows partition, boot in Windows, then copy the files from there to your USB storage. Sorry, this is an alternative rather than a solution but I’m out of ideas.
Disconnecting all USB devices except for the storage drive made no difference.
But…I found an old Pentax camera, took a couple of pictures and tried connecting its USB cord for data transfer to my PC. Zorin recognized it right away.
Going back to my post above.
What formatting is used on your thumb drive/s?
What formatting on memory in your Pentax camera?
Is that different and does that give you a clue.
The thumb drives don’t show up as “discs”, so I have no format information for them. I know that the Seagate FreeAgent outboard hard drive ships with NTFS, which is designed for Windows. But my Windows 7 OS doesn’t recognize it, either.
And the Pentax camera data indicates only “FAT12 (Bootable)”.
Zorin can read from NTFS or FAT. What happened when you tried formatting the Seagate from Windows? It sounds like the drive may be defective. Do you have a confirmed-working (tested on some other PC) usb drive you can plug in?
I’m waiting for a reply from Seagate support regarding the FreeAgent issue, but I think you’re right. It’s probably defective.
I tried two other USB devices with both Windows 7 and Zorin. My Sabrent hard drive docking station and a thumb drive that I know contains data were detected by both operating systems. The FreeAgent, again, registered on neither one.
Now I have an entirely new problem - one that I understand is quite common with Linux distros. Bluetooth has stopped working. I’ve tried every fix suggested online to no avail. Oh, well… In the overall scheme of things, it’s no big deal.
I’ve marked your post as the solution so that future readers can skip to the resolution.
Regarding your bluetooth issue, I’m using Core, so Zorin menu -> Settings -> Bluetooth has the options for bluetooth functionality. I don’t know what the path is on Lite but you can try this to see if it helps you out: Bluetooth and Mouse
Thanks again for your help.
In my Zorin Lite, the Bluetooth item in “Settings” shows devices paired but disconnected. The slider goes right back to “OFF” after trying to connect.
