Ok I am a total noob when it comes to Linux. I just installed Ubuntu last night and I have been messing around with it. I see that it doesnt automatically mount hard drives. I currently have 3 hard drives and 1 DVD drive in my computer. There are 2 hard drives on the primary cable and the hard drive and DVD drive are on the secondary cable. I have been reading and I really still have no idea what to do. This is what I have so far.

Applications -> System Tools -> Root Terminal
"mkdir mnt/edrive"

These hard drives have other stuff on them but I really dont want any of it. I just want them to be clean drives with nothing on them so I can load files on to them using Ubuntu. This is the point I am stuck at. Like I said I am a total noob. Please help me! Step by step would be for ever appreciated!

Thanks, MSBeckman

Right...well first you need to use cfdisk to repartition those drives the way you want them. The drive you've installed ubuntu on is probably /dev/hda so perhaps start with /dev/hdb? With the root terminal,

cfdisk /dev/hdb

resize the partitions how you want then reboot to re-read the partition table. Then, again in the root terminal, make a filesystem on the partition you've created. You could use fat, ext3 or several others but I'll suggest reiser

mkreiserfs /dev/hdb1

then you need to edit /etc/fstab so that it gets mounted

gedit /etc/fstab

add a line like this

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/edrive reiserfs defaults 0 0

then mount it

mount -a

FATAL ERROR: Cannot open disk drive
Press any key to exit cfdisk

that is with /dev/hdb

The mkdir /mnt/edrive creates a directory to use as a mount point for your drive.
The next step is to mount the drive to that location, well, actually you are mounting the file system...
Open the terminal and enter at the command line:
su
(root password)
mount -t vfat /dev/hde1 /mnt/edrive
That is assuming the drive has a vfat file system. Linux would be ext3

WOW I am dumb. My hard drives werent even connected... I remember why though. When the others are connected it says Operating System Not Found. How do I fix this??

By the way in BIOS when all the HD are connected it says
Primary Master [None]
Primary Slave [None]
Secondary Master [TOSHIBA DVD-ROM]
Secondary Slave [None]


Whats wrong?

I have messed with the jumper cables a bit and it just randomly shows up..

Is there a special way they have to be set up?