Sorry in advance for this but here is the situation. 2 harddrives. First (hda) is a dual boot with xp and linux (redhat) the second harddrive is all my data (hdb). I cant seem to mount it using

mount -t vfat /dev/hdb mnt/data

What am i missing. I know it obvious but i cant think. Im a newbie ('') Please Help

below is my fstab


LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0$/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0$/dev/sda1 /mnt/flash auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

below is my particians

3 0 60051600
hda 7413 18452 205558 76730 3606 4051 61450 128126 -2 161$ 3 1 30724281
hda1 15 77 184 154 0 0 0 0 0 154 154
3 2 104422
hda2 23 71 188 212 8 1 18 109 0 302 322
3 3 28178010
hda3 7364 18273 205066 76265 3598 4050 61432 128017 0 444$ 3 4 1 hda4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 5 1044193
hda5 9 25 104 70 0 0 0 0 0 70 70
3 64 40021632
hdb 22 179 401 56 0 0 0 0 -1 1624478 6764129
3 65 1
hdb1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 69 40009851
hdb5 15 77 184 29 0 0 0 0 0 29 29

Generally you don't mount /dev/hdb you mount /dev/hdbX where X is a number from 1-8 (or larger I suppose).

/dev/hdb describes the entire drive itself...
/dev/hdb1 describes the first partition on drive hdb

Other than that, run fdisk against it to be sure there are known partitions on it.

# fdisk /dev/hdb

then (p) to print configuration to your screen...

Thanks for the quick reply. this is what i got

/dev/hdb1 2 4982 40009882+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 2 4982 40009851 b Win95 FAT32

should i try mount -t vfat /dev/hd5 mnt/data ?

Yes... Should work just fine. Only comment would be that you'd have to specify /mnt/data if you issued the mount command from anywhere other than sitting at / (ie if you'd CD'ed into some subdir first).

Good luck!

This is what i got

[root@cmac /]# cd mnt
[root@cmac mnt]# dir
cdrom cdrom1 data flash floppy tmp
[root@cmac mnt]# cd /
[root@cmac /]# mount -t vfat /dev/hd5 /mnt/data
mount: special device /dev/hd5 does not exist
[root@cmac /]#

any thoughts?

oops i forgot the
hdb5

silly newbie :<

Thanks for all the help

it worked perfect :>