My printer is lying to me. USB drive detected, jk. Need help scanning to USB.

[altjxx]

I'm simply trying to scan a document to my USB drive, but I cannot get this to work for anything.

Attempt #1

Tried to format the USB drive as NTFS. Plugged it in, got the alert stating "USB drive detected.", and the minute I hit the green Start button, it gives me the error "Cannot detect a USB flash drive."

Attempt #2

Tried formatting as exFAT from within Windows. Got the same exact messages as I did in attempt #1.

What am I doing wrong here? If it detected the USB drive, why can't it detect a USB drive? I don't get it.

[PrintyPrint]

Hi, if anyone has a similar issue, I found a fix that worked for me!

I had a clean USB-drive in my printer, but it couldn't seem to recognize it once I pressed the scan button.

However, as was mentione in this guid: https://ij.manual.canon/ij/webmanual/Manual/W/MX920%20series/EN/UG/UG_Scanning0300.html, the scans are supposed to be saved in "CANON_SC\DOCUMENT\" or "CANON_SC\IMAGE\"

So I tried to manually create these folders on the UBS drive before inserting it into the printer, and voila; it worked!

[hfi]

Hi is there any solution or at least a hint what the problem could be?

I have the same issue on my Canon Maxify MB5455.

(No Computer involved.)

* I plug in the USB stick it tells me "USB drive plugged in" (not the original message since it is german, but i tried to translate).

* I go to the USB drive it tells me "supported data types will not be saved" (again translated, tried to keep it word by word)

* I try to scan a document to the drive, it tells me: "USB drive can not be detected"

Scanning itself however works, I successfully tried it with google drive cloud connection.

I tried multiple USB sticks with different filesystems (fat, vfat, exfat, ntfs), always the same result ...

[hfi]

Update:

I finally found an USB stick that seems to work "somehow"... so the Canon printers just seem to be very picky as to which USB sticks they like ...

The stick is a very old one but also has a vfat filesystem, which I also tried with different sticks with no success ...

However there is another thing: I wrote it works "somehow", since the printer can scan to the stick and afterwards looking at the stick using the printer menu, those files are actually really there ... But if I insert the stick into a Computer, I just see the files that already were there before ...

So what ever Canon is doing here ... It seems it has nothing to do with a "standard" USB drive / filesystem access ...

Update 2:

I did it! 🙂

The thing is: Most uptodate USB sticks come with a partition (which mostly is formatted as exfat).

However the printer using the old DOS-style filenames gave me the decisive hint.

1. You may not use a partion on the stick!

2. You have to use the old DOS fat filesystem.

After that the printer seems to work with my newer USB sticks, too. And I can see the files on the Computer, too.

Here's a short description, how you format the stick correctly using a linux system (you have to be root/admin to do that)

CAUTION!!!! Data on the stick will be lost! You should really be sure you do that on the correct drive, otherwise you may break your computer's system disk !!!!!

=> !!! do the "lsblk" with and without the stick plugged in to see the difference and to be sure you use the correct drive name !!!

- Let's assume your stick is recognized by the system as "/dev/sdb", then using the command "lsblk" should show you the stick as "/dev/sdb" as well as the partition as "/dev/sdb1"

- First you need to unmount the stick: "umount /dev/sdb1"

- Then you need to remove the partition: Call "fdisk /dev/sdb" , you get into fdisk's shell , if you press "p" you should see the partition. Press "d" to delete it, then press "w" to actually save the changes and exit.

- "lsblk" schould now only show you the stick (/dev/sdb) and no partition (/dev/sdb1).

- Now you format the stick using an old fat filesystem: "mkfs.fat /dev/sdb"

- After this you are done. You may remove the stick and use it. If you want to check it on the computer remove it and plug it in again, so the new filesystem gets mounted.