I have three computer with SuSe 9.0 and two different external usb 2.0 enclosure with two different hd (Toshiba, IBM) but all of them failed to read FAT32 partition. Even I changed the hd with each other. Under windows both hd are perfect no bad sector. Toshiba hd brand new. BTW. I can use them under KNOPPIX 3.3 without any hitch. I read in the archive (Febr. 2004) the same problem, but no viable solution. I suspect this is somehow a SuSE bug:((
Hello Steve, I was one of the people writing about problems with one of these usb devices. My logs were quite similar and I found that one of the characteristics of this problem was that the device was being recognized as /dev/sda1 , sda2, sda3 and sda4. When I tried to mount any of these partitions I got this very similar error message you had. I tried a lot but to no avail. I have the device working fine now in both windows and linux. What I did was to back up the data I had on the device (with windows obviously) and then under linux delete this 4 partitions (sda1,sda2...) and then create a new vfat partition /dev/sda1 (with fdisk but I guess it will work with any linux hd partitioning tool). Incredibly, that was the end of the problem. I just then created a mount point (say, /media/problematicusbdevice) and mounted without any problem. Now the device works fine both in linux and in w. Bottom line: try to partition again the device under linux and see what happens. By the way you don't need any 2.6 kernel it works fine with one of the latest 2.4 kernel. Hope this helps, Felipe.