i have redhat9 installed on an ide drive with dual boot win98.
i have a separate 'vanilla' seagate scsi device on system with no data on it.
scsi drive can be seen (fdisk'd formatted etc) by windows.

i eventually want to set the drive up as additional swap for rh9,
but i would settle for being able to 'see' the device from within linux.

how do i see/manipulate the drive in linux ?
as newbie i am at a total loss - it shows in 'dmesg':

----------
scsi1 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.8
<Adaptec 2940 SCSI adapter>
aic7870: Single Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs

blk: queue c7f8f814, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST1480 Rev: 5830
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
blk: queue c7f8fa14, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
scsi1:A:0:0: Tagged Queuing enabled. Depth 253
scsi : 1 host left.
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
----------

you can see the adaptec scsi cntrlr and the device
(as well as other cdroms ...)

i try to 'fdisk /dev/sda' or 'mkfs -t vfat /dev/sda' (or sda1) with result:
no such device or address ???

termination of scsi chain is enabled within the adaptec 2940 bios/setup.

whats the procedure/steps/cmds for setting up such a device as swap, /usr or whatnot for linux use?

in dmesg i can pretend to understand a device called 'scsi1' or 'sr0' but what is 'blk:' ???

any helps to push me on me learning path are much appreciated!

note: this drive was not connected when i installed redhat - i.e. kernel support may not be present ?

Maybe not /dev/sda. Do you have any other SCSI, USB or SCSI emulated devices?

Post the output of:
fdisk -l

or
cat /proc/scsi/scsi

only shows an emulated cd-rom ... ?

----------
[root@localhost root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 13.6 GB, 13600677888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1653 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 260 2088418+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hda2 261 1653 11189272+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 261 1089 6658911 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 1090 1102 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 1103 1621 4168836 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 1622 1653 257008+ 82 Linux swap
[root@localhost root]#
-----
[root@localhost root]# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: TEAC Model: CD-W540E Rev: 1.0B
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
[root@localhost root]#
----------

What is 'normal' when adding a drive?
How would you see an empty drive that you just added that had not yet been partitioned/formatted ?
What would be the first step in the drives preparation for use?