I just plugged a thumb drive into the Mandriva laptop. One I can't get to
work on my ubuntu box. It opened fine.

My brother, who has been using ubuntu for a few years, sent this to me about
thumb drives.

Quote;

I discovered something that may part of your issue here. I notice that if
when you are using these drives with windows and don't properly remove them
before clicking the safe removal icon, Ubuntu will declare the drive
unreadable. However, if you plug these drives back into a Windows machine
and go through the safely remove routine; they will be readable in Ubuntu.
When you are in ubuntu, it is recommend to un-mount these drives or shut
down the computer before removing them from the computer.