Forgive what's likely a stupid question and I don't mean to talk down to you, but you do have the dock powered with its DC adapter, yes? USB power alone might be enough to fully power a small ssd but is nowhere near enough power to spin up a mechanical 3.5" hard drive. Beyond that docks like that one also have a "master power" button or switch on the back of them that needs turning on as well. Looks like the power switch is right on the top of this one. Does the power indicator light?
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Yes, it is plugged in and the power LED is on.
This doesn't really answer your question directly, but instead of going through all of your USB devices with lsusb, you're probably going to have a much easier time just showing your storage devices with lsblk. That'll also show you the size of the storage device and block device name.
I would expect you to have some entry in the lsusb output, but it might be that it's described as a hub, given that this is some kinda combination device. What I'd do, if you want to know what device it is in lsusb output and dmesg doesn't make it clear, is something like this. Unplug the device.
$ lsusb >before.txt
Plug it in.
$ lsusb >after.txt
$ diff -u before.txt after.txt
That'll show you which lines were added for the device.
EDIT: If usb-storage was loaded when you plugged the thing in, my guess is that it's most-likely the case that Linux can see the drive.
For the dmesg I used -w to get a live feed and nothing happens.
I also compared lsusb before and after and even looked at lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,VENDOR,MODEL,SERIAL,TRAN , but there is indeed no change.
usb-storage was loaded when I manually started the service (sorry, forgot to state that).
usb-storage was loaded when I manually started the service (sorry, forgot to state that).
Ahhh, gotcha. Yeah, then that kinda kills that line of reasoning.
It looks like past versions of the product have worked with Linux.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=299894
I'm a little surprised that you aren't at least seeing something showing up as a USB device in your before-after difference. Looking at this, it looks like the device uses wall power, has a DC power supply with a barrel connector. It's possible that it might not function at all without that being powered up. Are you sure that you have the barrel connector in and the plug plugged into an outlet that is hot (i.e. not, say, an outlet controlled by a light switch that is off)?
EDIT: Also, are you sure that the drive works? My past experience with JBOD drive enclosures has been that a non-functional drive, something that the drive enclosure can't talk to, won't be presented as a Mass Storage device.
There is a power LED and it is on.
Sadly I only have this one drive to test which is the whole reason why I took the Dock.
This one works flawlessly on my Linux machines, all running Debian/LMDE. Plug and play.
Do these and report back with findings:
- I assume you've tried multiple USB ports? If not, try the other ports.
- Check
fdisk -land see if it shows up in there.
I assume you’ve tried multiple USB ports?
That's a thought.
Check fdisk -l and see if it shows up in there.
It won't hurt, but if he's not seeing anything with lsblk, fdisk -l probably won't show it either, as they're both iterating over the block devices.
Honestly, if he doesn't know that the hard drive itself functions, the drive not working would be my prime theory as to culprit. I have had drive enclosures not present a USB Mass Storage device to a computer if they can't talk to the hard drive over SATA.
I assume you’ve tried multiple USB ports?
That's a thought.
Simplest solutions first 😅
I'm also leaning toward the drive being a dud, because there is no reason a drive toaster shouldn't work on Linux out of the box. I'm running Linux Mint Debian Edition on my PC and didn't configure a single thing for my toaster.