pxi-8104 external USB drive not recognized?

[David_Gleeson]

When I plug a USB drive or thumb drive into the USB port of my PXI-8104 RT controller, the system doesn't seem to recognize it. Nothing gets mapped to a U: or 😧 drive, so I can't write to it and I can't transfer anything to/from it using FTP or another utility like MAX or Filezilla. Any ideas?

[Scott_A]

One thing I've seen is that certain USB slots will recognize an USB Drive.  Have you tried all the USB Slots?  Do you know what format the USB drive is in?

[David_Gleeson]

I've tried a couple different slots, but not all of them. I guess I'll cycle through all of them to see if I get a hit. The USB drive is formatted as FAT32.

[Texas_Diaz]

You must be very careful - not all USB drives properly report that they are of the "Mass Storage" class of USB devices.  RT can only recognize devices that properly report that they are of the generic "Mass Storage" USB class. 

RT also cannot read USB drives that have U3 encryption or other forms of disk storage encryption.  This is found mostly on SanDisk Cruzer or similar devices; if you format a USB drive you can mostly guarantee that the encryption has been removed.

One last thing - USB support on RT isn't automatic.  You actually have to install the USB support module in RT in order to enable the USB stack on RT (enabling the USB stack causes increased jitter, which is why USB is disabled by default on all versions of RT).  When installing software in MAX, there's an item near the bottom of the list of all programs that can be installed on the system called, "USB Support" - this installs the module that enables the USB stack.

-Danny

[David_Gleeson · Accepted solution]

It was the USB Support module. I had a feeling I was missing something software-wise. You'd think this would be highlighted in BIG BOLD LETTERS in the PXI manual.

Anyway, thanks for the help.