What can I do so that my Ubuntu 10.04-LTS w/ GNOME ver. 2.30.2 desktop recognizes my USB memory sticks that Karmic Koala did?

I have several USB flash memory sticks full of info that I recorded w/ the Karmic Koala version of Ubuntu. Now, Lucid Lynx Ubuntu doesn't see them. The disk Utility just tells me they're there, on the port but can't/won't read them, mount them or dismount them. Not even Eject works. I want to not only retrieve info from them but also store some stuff on them too. Any ideas why this ver of Ubuntu isn't behaving? Is there a workaround? Or was it something I did?

When I see it's info in Disk Utility all the Drive Info, apart from the Serial #, Make & model & that it's SMART Status is Not Supported, is it's Partitioning which it says is Master Boot Record. This particular USB stick is a Kingston DataTraveler 102 & I might not have used it yet 'cause it says that the main "partition" has 16G Free (it's a 16G stick) but that it's Unallocated space. It gives me the option to Partition the space. The 1kb is labeled as an "unknown" partition & gives me the options of Editing, Deleting or Formatting it.

Not sure what to do & if I'm to partition the Unallocated space do I do it in FAT so the stick can be used across platforms? I find it necessary sometimes though all my machines have their respective versions of Ubuntu.

Any help would be appreciated.

Addendum:

I figured I had nothing to lose so I chose Format->FAT on the 16G Unallocated Space & it failed w/ the following details:

Error creating partition: helper exited with exit code 1: In part_add_partition: device_file=/dev/sdd, start=1049600, size=16012803072, type=0x0c
Entering MS-DOS parser (offset=0, size=16013852672)
MSDOS_MAGIC found
looking at part 0 (offset 1048576, size 12000952320, type 0x85)
Entering MS-DOS extended parser (offset=1048576, size=12000952320)
readfrom = 1048576
No MSDOS_MAGIC found
Exiting MS-DOS extended parser
looking at part 1 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
looking at part 2 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
looking at part 3 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
Exiting MS-DOS parser
MSDOS partition table detected
containing partition table scheme = 0
got it
Error: Invalid partition table on /dev/sdd -- wrong signature 0.
ped_disk_new() failed

Should I try to format the 1kb? Could that be the problem?

Also:

The desktop reads/mounts the USB sticks as USB 1 & USB 2 on the desktop view & I can have limited access to the files through that view w/ the File Browser. However, there are also 2 more entries once in the File Browser (Canon DC (an SD card in a reader & PENDRIVE, the Kingston Traveler102) that I can't access at all. They appear to be just labels on the File Browser Places window w/ nothing beyond them.

Again, any help would be SO appreciated. I need to archive some files from the desktop to the sticks & upload others to sites online & I'm having trouble doing either.