To be specific, I cant access them. Plugging in a USB drive (mouse and keyboard work fine) will cause it to register for a second, popping up in my files, and then completely disappear. I have tried 3 different USB drives, all work on other computers, and they all show up temporally. My USB ports are fine, and so are the drives, but I cannot seem to view there contents or add more. I am new to ubuntu so it is probably a simple answer, but I need help. All the guides in found where outdated. If it matters I am using xfce on a low end laptop.

Edit: I managed to click on the drive before it disapered, it told me it "Failed to mount 16 GB Volume" "Not authorized to perform operation" I am the only one with access to this, there is no one who has higher authorization.

Edit 2: I looked up similar problems and have learned it's name (/dev/sda) created a separate directory (/media/usb) and attempted to manually mount it with "sudo mount /dev/sda /media/usb" It told me that either "/dev/sda is already mounted" or "/media/usb is busy" I then ran the command "sudo umount /media/usb" and "sudo umount /dev/sda" only to learn that both are out of use.... please help me. I have hit a wall.