Cannot mount USB sticks

As it says here, it is recognised as a swap, so adding all the exfat stuff probably wouldn’t help, as is evident by now.

As previously mentioned, it would be extremely helpful, if you could post what gParted is saying regarding the storage media in question.

Please, post screenshots, so it’s easy to see what’s going on.

That said, you need to be very careful, before editing files like /etc/fstab, etc. If you accidentally configure them the wrong way, your Linux may stop booting.
Additionally, no matter what change of that type you make to your OS, always back up before, no matter how mundane the change seems to you.

See Q5 if you have issues with your current backup method: