Hi Paul,
Hopefully this is recoverable. Let's try and track it down...
Check mBed info - only 18K free in memory even though it was empty! Decided to use Disk Utility to erase mBed.
The check info saying 18k free gets me suspicious already, and your other comment may have inadvertently identified the problem...
Does the mBed not do a garbage collection?
The mbed drive is just a FLASH disk, so there is no concept of garbage collection; it is a block storage on which the OS interprets a filesystem and performs actions.
However, that does make me think whether Mac OS X is doing garbage collection! I remember MAC OS X creates a .Trashes directory of some kind, and that may mean if you are deleting things, you aren't actually deleting them, simply moving them.
A google on the subject shows up a number of things related to this, and basically says you need to empty the trash with the disk plugged in to properly delete the files (here), or use terminal to delete the .trashes etc. Also, I found something which provides a simple way to stop it making these files (there may be better/official ways):
I suspect this is the problem; you "deleted" stuff but didn't actually delete it, and hence safari decided there was no space.
mBed is not appearing as an external drive when I plug it in.
I'm not clear whether this is a result of some of your Disk Utility actions, whether this is intermittent, or Mac has just blocked it out based on some actions? The mbed drive is somewhat intelligent, so if you delete everything it'll re-create the MBED.HTM, and if you reformat it, it'll go and reformat the disk itself back to the factory default.
So the main goal is just to get something to register it as a media; you can then delete or reformat it. Maybe try the Mac after a reboot in case it caches stuff, try it in a different USB socket (i'm not clear how Mac registers devices), or another computer to get it to appear.
Keep us posted. Also, the Mac OS X and safari versions would be useful for reference.
Simon
Safari stopped downloading to mBed.
Instead it downloaded to the "Downloads" folder (it changed the preferences itself). It looked like it saw something wrong with mBed and chose to reroute the download.
Check mBed info - only 18K free in memory even though it was empty!
Decided to use Disk Utility to erase mBed. (Does the mBed not do a garbage collection?)
mBed is not appearing as an external drive when I plug it in.
Have we lost it?