Usually when I install Linux on a laptop, I use the following command
$ dd if=installcdrom.iso of=/dev/sdX
where sdX is the inserted, unmounted USB stick (sdb usually), and installcdrom.iso is a CD-ROM image for installing Linux.
That has worked fine many times. The system boots from USB, but 'thinks' its using a CD-ROM. When I boot into the new system, the drive works fine.
But twice now (and last time I simply opted for a different distro, this time I don't have the option to do so), the installation procedure goes fine, everything is great, but when I try to mount media through that port, dmesg tells me that the following happens:
[18080.920173] usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[18081.053782] usb 1-5: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6335
[18081.053799] usb 1-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[18081.053813] usb 1-5: Product: Mass Storage Device
[18081.053824] usb 1-5: Manufacturer: Generic
[18081.053834] usb 1-5: SerialNumber: 058F63356336
[18081.054232] usb 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[18081.055566] scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[18081.057633] usb-storage: device found at 5
[18081.057644] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[18086.056331] usb-storage: device scan complete
[18086.057068] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Single Flash Reader 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[18086.664768] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 31291392 512-byte logical blocks: (16.0 GB/14.9 GiB)
[18086.665607] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[18086.665621] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[18086.665630] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[18086.668922] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[18086.668941] sdb: sdb1
[18086.674627] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[18086.674650] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[18094.767234] UDF-fs: No anchor found
[18094.767246] UDF-fs: Rescanning with blocksize 2048
[18094.824119] UDF-fs: No anchor found
[18094.824127] UDF-fs: No partition found (1)
[18094.941911] ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
[18114.585119] UDF-fs: No anchor found
[18114.585133] UDF-fs: Rescanning with blocksize 2048
[18114.622291] UDF-fs: No anchor found
[18114.622303] UDF-fs: No partition found (1)
[18114.727507] ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
[18116.896705] UDF-fs: No anchor found
[18116.896719] UDF-fs: Rescanning with blocksize 2048
[18116.928426] UDF-fs: No anchor found
[18116.928439] UDF-fs: No partition found (1)
[18117.025404] ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
Everything is fine, SCSI removable disk sdb becomes sdb1, the media is mounted... and... wait, wait... what are you doing? It's not a CD-ROM!
Too late. I get the message that it's wrong fs type, bad superblock, bad option.
Usually this doesn't happen, but it's a problem with the Squeeze installer, I find.
The problem does not appear until the file manager (Dolphin in this case, but I had the same problem with Nautilus last time I used the Squeeze netinst) attempts to mount the drive. Mounting it manually works fine, I'm not going to be the one using this computer, so it needs to mount automatically.
ISOLINUXto allow this if I recall correctly). Are you sure it was imaged correctly, for example, you are sure that you imaged to the root block device, and not a partition within it?