I have never used Linux before and have just installed Mandrake 10.0 official. When I plug in my external hard drive (that I used to use with WinXP) into the USB port, I can't navigate to it to access the files I need off it. I am using the KBE desktop.

Craig

hi there

did u mount ur USB drive as

mount /dev/sda1 /tmp
like this

regards

Hi, thanks for the reply.

No -- I assumed that Linux would spot that I had plugged it in (I'm used to windows). Is there a good reference I can use to find out about mounting drives.

If you use USB devices a lot, may I suggest that you install a utility called usbview and have it running on your screen when you plug the device in. It's helpful in that if the device is recognised, it'll show up as black, if it's not it'll show up as red.

It is possible that the device is actually being mounted already - check if there's a new directory called /mnt/removable. If there is, then your files may well be in there. You may need to be root to write to it though.

hi there
this is fro the documet i wrote for my user group

i have not considered USB devices though,but mounting partitions in general
for usb devices u should use
/dev/sda
/dev/sdb and likewise

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YOU can see that by running the following command at bash# prompt

#fdisk /dev/hda

If your hard disk is use

Primary master hda
Primary slave hdb
Secondary master hdc
Secondary slave hdd

If you use wrong device then you may get error message such as
"Cannot open device hdc"
If command is successful you get

[root@gaurav qmail]# fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4865.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
And could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help):


At this prompt run ‘p’ single character to see your partition table

Here is the result of my partition table


Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 561 4506201 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 562 3939 27133785 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 3940 4385 3582495 a5 FreeBSD
/dev/hda4 4386 4865 3855600 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 562 1096 4297356 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 1097 1606 4096543+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda7 1607 3008 11261533+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda8 3009 3872 6940048+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda9 3873 3939 538146 b Win95 FAT32


You can easily recognize which drive you want to mount
Here I have my windows partitions as

devices Windows Partitions

/dev/hda1 C
/dev/hda5 D
/dev/hda6 E
/dev/hda7 F
/dev/hda8 G
/dev/hda9 H


Do not confuse with /dev/hda2
It is my extended partition you cannot mount that whole partition but you can only mount the logical drives in this partition

Here say if I want mount my E drive in Linux
I need to have an empty folder somewhere to mount.
We can make a folder anywhere but as going by the convention we make all the folders and mount them in
/mnt folder
So, go to the mnt folder under root directory
Make a new folder in mnt directory say win_e

If you want to mount it temporarily (till the system is running)
You can mount it by the following command

#mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e

The syntax of the command is easy to interpret
/dev/hda6 gives the device you want to mount
/mnt/win_e gives the path of folder you want to mount

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--
regards