http://michael-peete...blems-of-usb.html
He found ndiswrapper (compatibility layer for MS WiFi drivers) had been registered as the driver for USB mass storage devices. And also that ndiswrapper now seems to be part of the base Ubuntu installation...
Any way, if you get the /dev/sdb link, then the kernel is pretty much done with it. Everything beyond that is userspace, so I think the problem is on that side.