Hello i have a problem well not a problem i just want to use this drive its on my main screen here and it keeps giving me err "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
or too many mounted file systems
Please check that the disk is entered correctly."

any one got any help it has win XP on it and it is on a Iwill IS150 sATA pci card
thanks any help is great P.S. Very new to this just started running linux about 3 week
ago

Can i not move stuff off of this drive because it is ntfs? i wanted to copy some stuff off of it...then format for linux..

You should be able to read the drive. Best practice is to treat NTFS partitions as "read only".

We will need to see the line in your /etc/fstab file that deals with the drive (or the command that you are using to try to mount it).

It should look something like:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 ntfs auto,ro 0 0

Or you could try (as root user):
mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

Note that he mount point (/mnt/sdb1 in my examples) must be a directory that exist.

thanks for the help i will have to try it out and see.. if i'm in config the cpu-->mandrak control center--->hardware--->then goto the harddrive thing "Disk drak"--->sda1 Tab --->mount point it need to be /dev/sdb1 or /mnt/sdb1 or both...but you all so said try root # comandline i would asume and just put "mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1" ok i have to turn the cpu off to hook it back up and i will re post if i need more help thanks

The mount point is where the data shows up at. /dev/sdb1 is the actual device where the data is stored. It is not where you go to access the data though. To access the data you mount the device to a folder in the system (called the mount point, /mnt/sdb1 for example). Then, anything that is in the drive will show up in the mount point.

/mnt/sdb1 is an older style of mount point. Some systems will use a different directory by default. You will need to know that the mount point exists before it will work.

Ok it lets me access it in the konsole but it gives me this error "Could not enter folder /mnt/sdb1" why is that..if i found the dir i want in the konsole whats the command to copy a dir over to a diffrent dir say i wanted to copy /mnt/sdb1/pic's to /mnt/removable/pic's....how would i do that...or is their something i can do to access it maybe i need to grant access to the user's...not sure how to do that because i am a "NEWBIE" hee hee sorry ...

Hmmm. I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess at what happened. I'll guess that you edited your fstab, mounted the drive (perhaps with "auto" as in my example), and tried to access it as a normal user.

Since NTFS doesn't track Unix style permissions, Linux has to guess at what to use. Try adding the following to the options list:

umask=0222

I'm not sure of the "2"s. I think this is right. For example:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 ntfs auto,ro,umask=0222 0 0

And the command to copy something is 'cp'. You will need to use the "-r" flag to copy a directory (the 'r' is for recursive). for example:

cp -r /mnt/sdb1/pic\'s /mnt/removable/pic\'s

(the backslashes are necessary as an escape character because ' has special meaning in bash.)

Thanks for all the help i could not get it to work in kde so i used the "mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1"line you gave me and then i entered Midnight commander and did all my copying with that very easy i could not make heads or tails of the "/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 ntfs auto,ro 0 0" or "/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 ntfs auto,ro,umask=0222 0 0" not sure we are talking about the same thing. and if we are then i'm to newbiefied to understand... but thats ok i'll get it one day... the command console is very cool it is so universal in the sense that linux all runs on unix...if you are willing to explain more on the other stuff i am willing to read it and try more....

ok gd2shoes i have figured it out but it still is giving me problems

i found /etc/fstab but it don't have the line we spoke about it has this line
/dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdb1 auto umask=0,user ,iocharset=iso8859-1, sodepage=850, suid, exec, kudzu, users 0 0

i'm going to go out on a limb to and guess i can't access a ntfs drive in my GUI because every time i try
it don't work

i can access it in console...

well any way when i decide to make the move to the bigger hard drive is their any way to move the operating system to it or will i just have to reinstall it?

"/dev/sdc1"

Here's your problem, or at least one of them. When you try to mount your /dev/sdb1 it is trying to mount /dev/sdc1 instead. That line should either start with:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

or

/dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1

Check with "cat /proc/partitions". This will tell you every drive and partition on the system. Unless you have an sdc1, I would just change it to say /dev/sdb1. If you do have an sdc1, you may want to copy the line and modify it.

I'm noticing a few errors on the line. I'll assume that you did not copy/paste. There should be no spaces in the comma-separated list. That should be "codepage" (change the 's'). I don't have a clue what the "kudzu" option is.

After you have an apropriate line in the fstab, you should be able to simply say "mount /mnt/hdb1" or "mount /dev/hdb1" and linux will go to the fstab file to look for the details. Further, I would expect the gui to work (though it may play by a few of it's own rules, not sure).