I am using Fedora. I bought a Maxtor 250G 7200RPM external hard drive. I installed it according to the instructions listed in this website the only exception is mounted it in sdc rather than sda. But three days late, I can not find it even can not find the hard drive in the Hardware Browser. So I can not mounted. Could anybody can help me to solve the problem?

With the Maxtor external hard drive turned on, open a console and run:

$ su
<enter root password>
# fdisk -l

Post the output that you get and post your /etc/fstab file as well. Also state whether you have or had any other external storage devices attached to your computer like zip drives, card readers, digital cameras, etc. Given the fact that your maxtor drive was setup as sdc, I assume you did. The first usb storage device is given sda, the second sdb and the third sdc. The trouble comes in when you start removing devices and rebooting the sdx letter can shift. fdisk -l will tell you how your system sees the maxtor drive now and fstab will tell you how it was setup in the past.

Tks very much!!!

following your instructions, I can find the hard drive by Hardware Browser.

Pls chekc the information I copied from the screen as flws:

Hope this question and your kind answer can help other guys. For your information, even I don't have other USB device, this hard drive always appears as sdc.

[root@localhost root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 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 30147 242051355 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 30148 30401 2040255 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.9 GB, 250999209984 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table
[root@localhost root]#

ABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/udev/FlashDrv1 /mnt/flash vfat,ext2 user,noauto,rw 0 0

However, I still cannot mount this drive. It shows as flws:

Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table
[root@localhost root]# cd /mnt
[root@localhost mnt]# ls
cdrom cdrom1 flash sdc
[root@localhost mnt]# mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc
mount: /dev/sdc1 is not a valid block device
[root@localhost mnt]#

Sata drives are also named with the scsi designation of "sdx" in the newer 2.6 kernels so I assume you either have a sata hard drive or a scsi hard drive which takes the first sda. I'm curious about this entry:

/udev/FlashDrv1 /mnt/flash vfat,ext2 user,noauto,rw 0 0

What's normally mounted on /mnt/flash? It looks like some auto mounter for a usb storage device. Would you normally access the maxtor external drive through /mnt/flash?

This would indicate a corrupted partition table on sdc, your maxtor drive:

Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table

Obviously that's not good. Can you access the drive in windows? I would guess not if the partition table is corrupt. I have a 120GB external maxtor that I had some trouble with as well. It was one of those with a "One Touch" backup button which only works in windows. It came from the factory formatted with one FAT32 partition over the entire drive. I was using mandrake 9.2 at the time and it would not recognize the drive partition although fdisk -l showed it listed as sda with an invalid partition table as well. The drive was properly detected in windows and worked fine however. I tried to repartition the drive in mandrake and the partition table got totally messed up and the drive partitions weren't recognized in windows or linux. I repartitioned the drive again in windows with Acronis Partition Expert and the drive was recognized in both windows and linux and has worked fine to this day. The whole point of this longwinded thing is I think that there might be something with the factory partition that may cause problems with linux.
Things to try - check the drive out in windows if you have access to a windows box. If you can see the drive in windows, back up your data and try to repartition the drive in windows then check the drive in linux with fdisk -l and see if the partitions are recognized.

moved to correct forum, Linux - Newbie