I just got a brand new HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop, with two 120 gb hard drives installed in it. I installed FC6 on one, got it to boot, working fine, except that I thought it would pick up the other one as a seperate disk, sort of like when I plug in my 1 gb usb thumbstick. automount picks it up and asks me if I want to open it in a new window. Also my external 750 gb seagate usb harddrive, every time I plug it in to the laptop, automount doesn't pick it up either.

Do I need to configure the external HD? Right now it's vfat. It worked fine on my older computer though, where I had FC4 installed.

I thought about reinstalling FC6, and using RAID to make it act as one disk, but as I've already downloaded a whole bunch of stuff from fedora extras, livna, etc, I would prefer not to have to erase all the customizations I've done already.

While I'm a little familiar with fstab, and text editing, I would prefer the easiest solution, is there a yum package I need to DL?

Thanks In advance.

If your usb ports are setup and working, there shouldn't be anything you need to do; the connected drive should be automagically recognised, mounted and an icon should appear on the gnome desktop and in nautilus.

I would open a terminal and run dmesg to see if the device is been detected upon plugging it in.

ok when I run cat /proc/bus/usb/devices I get:

T: Bus=05 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=06 Cnt=02 Dev#= 6 Spd=480 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0bc2 ProdID=0502 Rev= 2.00
S: Manufacturer=Seagate
S: Product=ST94811U2-RK
S: SerialNumber=3351443047544750
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr= 4mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage
E: Ad=01(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=82(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms


here's my fstab:

dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/SEA_DISC vfat pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

the external is clearly showing up there so I tried:

[root@localhost etc]# mount /media/SEA_DISC
mount: mount point /media/SEA_DISC does not exist
[root@localhost etc]# mkdir /media/SEA_DISC
[root@localhost etc]# mount /media/SEA_DISC
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


then

[root@localhost etc]# dmesg | tail
SCSI device sdc: 1465149168 512-byte hdwr sectors (750156 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
sdc: Mode Sense: 10 00 00 00
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: sdc1
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdc
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.



And I still can't open it in a window, or get it to recognize the 2nd internal harddrive.

I should also mention that I plugged my 1 gb usb thumb stick in and it worked perfectly---- a screen popped up asking me how I wanted to open it, and everything. much improved compared to previous versions of fedora which required fstab tinkering.

FYI noauto means the filesystem will not be mounted at boot time. However you still have problems due to the "VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1" error. Is this a dual boot PC? Was the second drive partitioned / formated? Post the output of the command:
fdisk -l (that is a small L and you must be root)

[root@localhost Rockgod]# fdisk -l
bash: fdisk: command not found

Am I missing a program to run that command?

No. /sbin/fdisk -l

If you used su to become root you will still use the environment from your regular user. Depends on distribution but typically /sbin is not in a regular users path.
If you use:
su -
then you will use roots environment.

Ok got it:

[root@localhost Rockgod]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 14593 117113850 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 14593 117218241 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 91201 732572001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

sdb1 is a linux partition not a FAT32. You will need to specify the correct filesystem type in your fstab file. If you do not know what it is try auto. The easiest method is to edit the file.

So I edited fstab to:


GNU nano 1.3.12 File: fstab

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/SEA_DISC vfat pamconsole,exec,auto,managed 0 0


and I still get this:

[root@localhost etc]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 14593 117113850 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 14593 117218241 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 91201 732572001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)



Without it picking up the external hard drive or the second internal hard drive.
I noticed that in fstab, the external hd was coming up as sdb1 but in fdisk -l it was sdc1 so I changed fstab:

/dev/sdc1 /media/SEA_DISC vfat
pamconsole,exec,auto,managed 0 0


and still no luck. let me restart my comp and see if that works.

interestingly, it doesn't recognize either HD, and during start up it says that it can't boot the local filesystem.

changing fstab will not change how the disk is partition. sdb1 is a linux filesystem not a FAT32.
I would guess that it is formated as ext3. So as root try to mount it with the following command.
mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /media/data (Be sure to create the directory /media/data)

If your sdb drive is not being recognized every boot then it could be failing. Check the output of the dmesg command to see if there are any error messages.

ok actually I was able to find the external hd at media/SEA_DISC and get it mounted and open it up. I made an icon on the desktop for it, and it appears like I need to be root to unmount it. also, when I boot up the system says it can't mount the local file systems, then it says "Mounting other file systems: fail, mount point 0 does not exist." whats up with that?

I still can't get at the 2nd internal HD, and is there a better way to handle the external hd, cause right now this icon is stuck on my desktop, and I was hoping it would mount ala the usb stick with a nice popup screen and everything.

Have you tried mounting the 2nd disk i.e. sdb1?

Ok well it turns out I can access the external harddrive, but it won't let me copy files to it. No write access. I tried chmod and logging in as root and changing it but it kept reversing when I cahnged the owner and the permissions. What's up with that?