Hi guys ,I am trying to run my toshiba external hard disk(usb) on mandriva 2007.1 ,but the system is not mounting this disk .
what could be the problem........

It must be throwing some error. Please quote that here so that we can better understand the problem.


regards

mdv 2007.1 reveals the flash drives, cdroms, dvd, and floppy in /media/

Are you able to see the drive in start/system/configure your computer/mount points?

Does your usb work on other things.

Try lsusb in a console to see if the device is listed.

To reveal what it should be connected to, type lspci. (lspci -v for "more")

That should list all devices connected to the pci bus.

My flash drive just works.

Regards, Glenn

You can also try to disconnect the drive, then connect it again and run dmesg as root in a console. It should say if the driver (usb_storage) detects the hard disk or not.

when i ran lsusb ,it showed that the system had recognized the device ,but it not shown in /mnt......

It should show in /media

No,it's not...

Are you able to see the drive in start/system/configure your computer/mount points/Create delete and resize harddisk partitions?

yes ,i am able to see it ,but i can't use it.
i mean i can do every thing on it except browsing files.

OK. At least you know what it is called.

Can you mount the drive from /configure your computer/mount points/Create delete and resize harddisk partitions?

You may need to set a mount point.

This will give it a listing in /etc/fstab.

Also check there to see that is has or not.

I mounted the partition ,but a msg appeared to say that i must format the partition which i don't want to.......

Can you please post exact error messages?

The msg was in arabic ,but it mean that :

if you don't do format for this partition,you will not be able to add anew files for it.

sorry because i can't tell you the exact msg...

Try manually mounting it (as root) before editing your /etc/fstab file. One common mistake is to try to mount the disk instead of a partition. You may have better luck using the partitioner program to mount the filesystem. It might identify the encoding used and select the proper options for you such as "nls=" or "utf8".

Before that, see if you can see the partition using konqueror.
Enter "sysinfo:/" in the address bar. All of the partitions should be listed. It could be listed by its label, if it has one, or as something like "120 GM Media". The second column will indicate the filesystem. You haven't told us the device (e.g. /dev/sdb1) or the filesystem (e.g. ext3). You can try right-clicking on the partition in the sysinfo:/ page and select mount.

Also, you can use the fdisk command to list the partitions on the disk, and the file command to indicate the filesystem on a partition.
sudo /usr/fdisk -l /dev/sda

sudo file -s /dev/sda1

If you decide to create an entry in /etc/fstab instead of using automount, I would recommend using certain options.
For a vfat or ntfs formatted partition use the user,uid,gid,dmask,fmask and noauto options. This will allow you to set the ownership and permissions on the partition. It will be the same for the entire partition. The noauto option will prevent a boot up failure if the drive isn't present (being an external drive).

Also, instead of a device name such as /dev/sda1, use either "UUID=" or "LABEL=" entries. You can discover the filesystem UUID number using udevinfo.
udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sda1
Here is an example:
I could use either "UUID=b545812a-57af-43e8-bbd8-f9b43dd25fc8" or "LABEL=NetDisk" in the first column of the /etc/fstab entry for this filesystem.

If you do add an entry to /etc/fstab, you may need to manually mount it with a mount command, as in: "mount/media/greatmusic" or "mount /mnt/greatmusic" instead of doing so graphically. Maybe if you use a mount point in /mnt/ instead it won't conflict with an automatic mountpoint under /media/.