How do you get a flash drive to work?

I need to get my flash drive working in Linux, This is what I have done.

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0483:1307 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Cytronix 6in1 card reader
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0409:0058 NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

This is from lsmod:
usb_storage 65984 0
usblp 11264 0
usbcore 104312 4 usb_storage,usblp,ehci_hcd

I have this in fstab:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/flashdrive vfat owner,users 0 0

I issue this command " mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flashdrive " then I get "must specify filesystem type" message and the light on the flashdrive blinks off then on.

Then I issue this command "mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/flashdrive " I get " wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, or too many mounted file systems"
I have also tried msdos and auto for filesystem type and still does not work.

I have read in another forum about needing to enable vfat support or something in the kernel BUT!! I already had this drive mounted and deleted some quickbooks files off of it so it was working somehow.
Slack 10, 2.6.10 kernel. KDE 3.3
Thanks.

Anyone have any idea?????

My thought also is you may need to have vfat support built into your kernel, but if it was once working.... Was it workingh before you upgraded to the 2.6.10 kernel and now won't? I have the same problem with a fat 32 partition on my WD external usb drive.

Unless you need fat 32 between Windows and Linux, why not format your usb reader/writer in ext2 or even reiserFS or ext3, all of which are vastly superior to fat32, and your kernel already supports it.

Yes, I was told that I need vfat support built into the kernel somewhere else but, It was working in this kernel, just 3 minutes before I tried to copy something to it then all of a sudden I could not mount it. I have already accessed this flash drive and deleted files off of it so vfat is probably already there and there must be a way to access it again. This is driving me CRAZY!! :O I do need it for transferring files from winxp to linux.

i thought for usb type flshdisks you need to use usbfs for the filestystem type. probobly the same for yours

No, you can use whatever filesystem you need or want to. I have tried alot and still no luck. I think maybe this drive might be the kind that needs a windows driver and they do not work with Linux pet.

This may be a dumb suggestion, but are you sure the flash drive has been partitioned?