The USB drive seems to be partitioned. Do not mount the device directly, but the partition /dev/sdb1 instead:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Check to see if your udev rules for usb_modeswitch include your USB. Here is an example:

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 058f:6387 Alcor Micro Corp. Flash Drive

gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/ 40-usb_modeswitch.rules

Add a new rule based upon the information you found in lusb:

#Generic USB
ATTR{idVendor}=="058f", ATTR{idProduct}=="6387", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '/%k'"

Unplug and replug USB, it should now show up as read-write.

Format the USB, add a new partition table as per usual.

I had this problem. Basically in my instance I had not formatted it at all. (I wanted exfat, but any format will probably do). It was just empty unformatted space. Take it to your disk manager window, or use the terminal, to place a format into the drive (example: fat32). then the computer can figure out what to do and can place data to or pull it from the drive. Also as an aside, if the drive is or recently was once bootable, try totally ERASING/FORMATTING the drive. When I say that I mean writing zeroes over all the data, totally obliterating it. Deleting usually means erasing the file names and such so it is "lost" and would be eventually overwritten, but can be recovered if you do it soon enough. Just erase, totally wipe, format the usb. These are interchangeable terms to some extent in this context. The drive which was once bootable may have been set to read only or write only or some such control - because its job was to boot your computer and to take it over essentially. It was set to write, essentially, inward onto your machine. So you may need to take the step to wipe it (forcibly) to make sure it can receive new data. May need to use higher authority (sudo).

Different Fault Causes this Error:

In addition to trying to mount a disk instead of a partition (see accepted answer), there's another problem which causes the same error to be puked:

Attempting to mount a partition without a filesystem.

In below example, please substitute the X in "/dev/sdX1" with your own disk designation and the "1" with the partition number you want to format with the filesystem.

Error:

I was indeed mounting a partition and not an entire disk as was the case with the OP's error when I executed:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdX1 /media/userName

but nonetheless received the same error:

"mount: /media/userName: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdX1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error"

Diagnostics:

I checked the filesystem type on the partition against the one I was specifying in the mount command:

df -Th /dev/sdX1

This returned devtmpfs; clearly this was not correct.

Solution:

Format the partition with a filesystem and remount:

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdX1 /media/userName

The mount now succeeds.

If you execute

df -Th /dev/sdX1

the FS Type now reports "vfat"

Conclusion:

I had a Homer Simpson moment. I had partitioned the disk but got called away before I laid down a filesystem on the new partition. Thus, of course the mount command failed.

D'Oh!

If you have reached here from Google, it's probably because the journal entries in your disk are wrong. Check and fix your disk by

e2fsck -y -f -v -C 0 '/dev/sda1'

replace /dev/sda1 with your drive