Are you sure your usb is formatted to FAT32. Some usbs are formatted according
ntfs, which sometimes causes problems.

Yes it is fat32, i think this has more to do with the fact it is automounted and
that in order for it to automount i had to remove floppy from bios, this is some
kind of system issue rather than formatting issue, I have used this usb many
times to write data to, the only difference i made was yesterday making bios
disable floppy drive.

ok, well I wanted to write more data to the usb and so I rebooted the pc, turned
the floppy drive back on and I still cannot write to the disk, it says I dont
have the permission, interstingly, even though I turned floppy back on in the
bios the usb device automounted.

I followed this thread and someone said they had to remove usbmount from
synapitc, well I did this, rebooted, and now I can remove files, sadly however I
am back to where I was two weeks ago wondering how to make usb mount up
automatically with boot! *bangs head against wall*

ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1448092.html

If you said this earlier, it's been truncated...

What are you trying to accomplish by having it auto-mount?

So that when I click on a file in recent lists I gain immediate
access and not have to open up nautilus and then double click on the usb icon
first, also, when I do things like send someone an email and make an attachment
I'd like the drive to be readily available, generally the point of auto mount.

Can you please post the output of the fstab file using the following command..
musabbir@musabbir:~$ gedit ../../etc/fstab &
I am assuming you are in your home directory. If not change accordingly..

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda9 during installation
UUID=1bd48858-c913-4a7a-a6ae-9912545e4a63 / ext2
errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda10 during installation
UUID=72132be5-446f-44b5-a4bb-ae72f92e7f97 none swap sw
0 0
# swap was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=85a92f31-1fdc-45b3-9761-9d92881e641b none swap sw
0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/winxp ntfs rw,user 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/winxptemp ntfs rw,user 0 0
/dev/sda6 /mnt/linuxdata ext2 rw,user 0 0
/dev/sda7 /mnt/linuxdata2 ext2 rw,user 0 0

I cant see any usb drive in that file.
In my fstab file, I can see the following, which is my usb drive/dev/sdb1
/media/ILLUSION vfat
rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8\
=1,flush 0 0

Can you please post the output of
gksudo gedit ../../etc/mtab &
And make sure your usb is plugged into the computer

I didnt think adding a usb drive was possible on the condition it may not be in
there upon next reboot if I had for example used it to put data into my laptop.
If it is taken out will it throw out error messages at me if I added like you do
below?

You don't need to touch fstab in Ubuntu for usb drives. They are mounted
upon connection. Depending on the format and user permissions, you may have
to provide a password to access them.

It would have been better if you could have posted the result of mtab file.
Anyways, lets try to do it manually.
first create a mount point.......in terminal type: sudo mkdir
../../media/usbDrive/
The above command would create a directory
Then manually mount your usb using mount command
then, type df -h -------Now, before typing this command, PLUG IN your
flash drive
it would list all the drives attached to your pc. From the list, find you usb
drive name in the first column....My usb was shown as follows:
/dev/sdb1 1.9G 1.9G 22M 99% /media/ILLUSION
Then open your mtab file:
gksudo gedit ../../etc/mtab
In your mtab file, at the end, type the following
/dev/sdb1 /media/ILLUSION vfat
rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8\
=1,flush 0 0
*bold font indicates:/dev/sdb1 may vary on your pc, find through df -h command
as previosly mentioned
ILLUSION - is the name of my usb drive - name of your usb can be found, from df
-h command.

Does it mater which usb connector it sits in after this is complete a to whether
ubuntu loads it up automatically?

Each USB port has a different hardware address so yes, it probably does.

Well what about the error message issue? if it is told there should be a usb
device to mount and it isnt there, amd I merely presented with an annoying box
telling me something is missing? Will I be in no better position than I am now
of having to load up the konquerer to mount the usb disk ?

Well, yes, if you tell a system to mount a physical device that isn't actually
where the system expects to find it, you can expect to get an error message.
Having never tried to auto-mount a USB resource in Linux I have no idea what
form that message will take.

It seems to me you have to options:
1) make sure the USB drive is always there and plugged into the same USB port.
2) manually launch a small script after boot to find the drive and mount it.

Doesn't the system mount the USB drive when it is plugged in to the port? On my 10.04 system it is.

I dont have to do any hassle with my flash drive either.
And my usb is always deteced as /dev/sdb1, regardless of which port I plug it
in. Though, I must confess that I have never tried with 2 flash drives, so, dont
know what would happen in that case.

Yep, if it's the first external device it should always come up with the same
designation at the OS level. At the hardware level, however, the USB drivers
that are loaded to talk to the drive are pointed to the hardware address of the
USB port in question.