I think I just did something really dumb and now I need help. Please bear with me here, for I am a complete newb with Ubuntu and I may not be able to tell you exactly what I did in the correct terms.

I just installed an extra storage drive and used GParted to format it to ext3. Once I was done I assumed I had to remount it since I had to unmount it to format. So I went to System>Administration>Disks and I put it in <user name>/home (I think). I wish I could be more clear with the exact steps I took but I can't pull up Disk anymore to check. In fact, I can't open anything at all including the terminal. Not that I'd know what to do with it if I could open it, but it won't open. I happened to have two browser windows open which still work, but I can't open a third one.

I have Windows XP on another drive, if that helps, and there's absolutely nothing on the new hard drive. (Although it is somehow mysteriously missing about 50 GB but that's about the least of my problems right now.) What did I do and can I fix it? Thanks.

Try rebooting.

Thanks, everything is back to the way it was. The drive is listed as inaccessable and I'm assuming I should enable it and chose an access path?

Can you post you /etc/fstab here?

You will need to add a line to this file to point to your new drive.

I suggest mounting the drive under your home directory, for example /home/<userName>/data. Create this directory, and then add the following line to fstab using your favourite text editor:
Obviously, replace /dev/hdb1 with whatever your new drive is, and <userName> with your username.

I hope this helps
--Ian