Hi,

I am using SUSE 10.2 with 2 hard drives, the first drive is a ST340016A 40 Gig SATA and the second is a WD 400BD-755M 40 Gig EIDE. The first drive is /dev/hdd, which was formatted as 100% Linux, the second drive I left intact to read from (its an XP drive). Fdisk reports 1st drive /dev/hdd - linux 40 gig, second drive /dev/sda NTFS 40 gig. BUT, I cannot read the second drive.

I know I need to mount the drive to read it, but I've been reading the posts and manuals and I can't make heads or tails how to do this. Can someone just tell me simply how to do it (or is there no simple way??).

Thanks for your help

Alan

if the drive was an XP drive, and you dont want to use linux, connect only the 2nd drive to your motherboard, and format the drive as ext3. then reconnect the drive how you want them. your os should then read the drive since it would no longer be NTFS or FAT32. for a partitioner see:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Thanks. Sounds easy enough, too easy in fact. Just a few more questions. First, by "format" I assume that its a non-destructive format and will not take off the data, just convert the format of the drive? Also, I have the second drive jumpered as the slave. I assume that I should rejumper the drive when I remove the master, so that the second drive is now jumpered as the master? Will this make a difference when I reconnect the original Linux master drive back in after the reformat?

Thanks
Alan

from the way im interpreting your question, then you want to know how to mount the drive?

if so then it is as simple as
creating a mount point:

mkdir /mnt/sda (it doesnt have to be this name or even this location)

then, mount it...

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda
(if your trying to mount the first partition then it will be sda1 second is sda2 etc.)

reformatting the drive will erase all data-so transfer files you need onto a disk or USB stick before you do it.

Are you asking how to mount an NTFS partition (in your case /dev/sda1)?

To mount an ntfs partition:

First figure out how that partition is know to your system:

do fdisk -l as root

Take note of the partition/disk you'd like to mount (what's it called? sda1, sda2, sda3, ...?)

Then you mount it by first making a mount point (as root):

mkdir /mnt/windows

Then you mount the partition (here's where you need the name of your partition), onto the mount point you just created:

mount -t ntfs /dev/sda? /mnt/windows

Then look into the /mnt/windows directory to find your data.

When you're done, you should unmount it again:

umount /dev/sda?

If you'd like to have it permanently mounted, you can add it to /etc/fstab.

Note: it may be interesting to install ntfs-3g. If you do, you'd mount the partition as:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda? /mnt/windows