hey im realitivy new to linux and ive run into a spot ot bother, i have 2 hard drives 1 for linux and 1 for storage (which was previously used in windows but no windows files are on it just storage) it is ntfs, in devices it shows me my cd rom my linux hard drive (hdd6) and my other hard drive /sys, but wont let me mount it, any suggestions ? cheers

First, create a mount point if you haven't done so yet. The mountpoint is where the contents of the partition will be shown. I suggest something like /mnt/storage just to get started.

Second, determine what the device name of the partition you want to mount is, as well as the partition type (which usually indicates roughly what filesystem is used). You can get a list of all partitions on all disks using fdisk -l. Something like /dev/hdb1 would not be too surprising since that is the first partition on the slave disk on the first IDE controller.

Mount it! mount -t <fsname> <device> <mountpoint> is the general synopsis, so if /dev/hdb1 is a FAT32 partition and we want to mount it at /mnt/storage this would do the trick: mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/storage

If that works you can add it to /etc/fstab to have it automatically mounted on each boot. You can also set umask and ownership (userid/groupid) to make sure users can use the files on the partition as you want them to.


Håkan

hey ive created a mount point as you said /mnt/storage and when i click apply it sais that it cant be mounted but i can continue if i know what im doing and when i look in the directory i can see the storage directory ive created but nothing inside

hey man thanx i got it mounted but now only root can access it and when i try and change the permission it tells me its a read only file system, look

linux:/mnt/20gig # chmod +rwx /mnt/20gig
chmod: changing permissions of `/mnt/20gig': Read-only file system

You can't just change the permissions on the mount point or partition. You need to pass some options to the mount command, either on the command line or in /etc/fstab to make it readable by those who should have access. Or, for a quick and dirty fix: Specify umask=000 on the "option" part of the line in /etc/fstab. That will make all files on the partition readable/deletable and executable by everyone. This is of course a security hazard but I have outlined another neater way here.


Håkan