I am running SuSE 10.1 on one machine & win XP on another, I would like to use a spare HDD on both machines, to store & transfer files etc, from one to the other. Setting up the HDD on Windows was no Prob', partitioned with fdisk, Fat 32, formatted etc. Setting up & accessing on SuSE prob's, I can't get it to work. Using SUSE 10 Bible, with the spare HDD in as a Slave, I made a folder on /dev/slave, in a root user terminal did mount -tvfat /dev/hdb1/mnt, this did not seem to do anything, & on looking at /dev/slave it shows the folder with a red cross & a padlock sign, on trying to access it it says that I don't have the required permissions, on trying to access it as root exactly the same. Looking at similar threads here somebody says that an entry should be made in fstab, but I don't know how to do this. I would like help on how to install & use the slave HDD, full details from start to finish would be good if possible. thanks.

AS root, delete /dev/slave. That's wrong. It won't work as you expect.

Then do this:
1) create a proper mount point to mount the slave drive. as root, mkdir /mnt/slave. That's the mount point.

2) now edit /etc/fstab. notice how the other partitions are entered in fstab, and make a similar entry for the salve drive. But, the first drive is probably /dev/hda, with partitions numbered starting with number 1. The slave drive will be hdb. If there is only one partition on hdb, then the fstab entry would start with: /dev/hdb1 /mnt/slave. At this point you haven't formatted the new drive yet. So, decide which filesystem type you want; ext2, ext3, reiserFS, etc. Add the appropriate filesystem type to fstab: '/dev/hdb1 /mnt/slave ext2 defaults 0 0' would be a complete entry for the new device.

3) now you have to create the partition on the drive. You may use YaST to do that, or command-line tools such as cfdisk. With Yast, you can create and format in one operation. With command-line tools, you will probably create the partition with one tool, then format with another, such as mke2fs.

4) at this point, you should have a disk which is partitioned and formatted, just waiting to be used.

5) mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/slave.

You mentioned you already formatted the new drive in windows so you already know its Fat32.

Bigrigdriver was trying to tell you that when you add a new drive you dont need to create a folder in /dev. Those devices (called "block devices") are automatically managed by the system. They're named to make it easy for everyone. HDA (A for first drive), HDB (B for second drive), etc. Numbers are used for partitions. "fdisk -l" will show you your partitions.

You just need to create a mount point and then mount the device to the mount point.

You can create a mount point anywhere. /mnt /media /mount are the most common folders people use for mount points (even though you can have a mount point anywhere).

Suse 10.0-10.1 mounts windows partitions in /windows folder so I would do

mkdir /windows/D (I'm assuming your new drive is the D Drive in windows)

then you can just do "mount /dev/hdb1 /windows/D"
then just "cd /windows/D" and "ls -l" and u should be able to see your files.

Side notes:

You can type "mount" at any time to see ALL of your active mounts

/etc/fstab is the file read at boot-up to mount everything at startup. So soon as you add an entry to fstab, it'll automatically mount everytime you boot up.

Thanks for this, I will try again using your info.

I followed your instructions & all was well.
Cept I found that fdisk did not work, but cfdisk did.
I can only add/remove/etc files on my new slave when "root",
is there a way that I can do this as user ?
Great, Thanks very much bigrigdriver & crazibri, regards.

You need to set the mount point, or any files below with the proper privs for the user show is accessing the drive. I do this:

chown -R 'user':'group' 'dir on drive (/mnt/backups, etc.)

; the -R will set all files and subdirectories. I normally make the users group be the group who has access to the files on the drive, but then security is no biggy to me since it is my system.

chmod -R 666 'dir on drive'

; this will give the user, group, and everybody full access.

Regards,

Randy.

Thamks, regards.