what is the difference
 

To mout my other partitions I always used this syntax #mount -t type device mount_point. I just realized I can just use #mount device location. Is their any reason to use the first format(it is longer).

#mount device only works if there is an entry for the device in /etc/fstab. Also, if you want to mount the filesystem to somewhere other than what's specified in /etc/fstab, you would use
mount dev mountpoint
and use -t in case your system fails to auto-detect the file system type.

That is what I thought. I do not have an entry for my root partition,/dev/hda3, for redhat in my /etc/fstab. But I can still mount it with this command #mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/redhat. Hmm

as I said, the -t option is not necessary if the system can tell what type of file system it is.

o.k. have not drank my coffee yet today, a little droggy. Thanks