I recently had to re-install Linux and had this particular disk working fine before. But for some reason, I can't mount it. I am not positive of the file system type I had created prior (it was a very long time ago) but I think it is ext3. My /etc/ fstab looks like the following:

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/sda3 / ext3 noatime 0 1
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto 0 0
/dev/hda1 /storage1 ext3 defaults 1 1


# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
# use almost no memory if not populated with files)
none /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec

I have several other drives I haven't tried to mount yet...but I know Linux does see the drives based on the output from fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 19457 156288321 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 400.0 GB, 400088457216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 269 1959930 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 270 48641 388548090 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hde: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 1 30401 244196001 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdg: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdg1 * 1 24321 195358401 a5 FreeBSD

Disk /dev/hdh: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdh1 * 1 9729 78148161 a5 FreeBSD

Not sure why those two drives are showing up as FreeBSD. That might be another thread

But when I try to mount /dev/hda1:
mount: /dev/hda1 already mounted or /storage1 busy

Also, do any of you know how to tell what file system is on a partition? Thank you for your help! It is much appreciated. Never had this issue before.

How do you know it's not mounted? Can you cd to /storage1?

Thank you for the reply. I can change to the directory, but there is no data listed. Also, when i issue the mount -l command I get:

/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,devmode=0664,devgid=85)

So it is not shown as being mounted.

<edit> As a update to my first post, I realized by mounting a partition, even when the file system type is not known passing the -l option to mount will list the file system type. For whatever reason, I still can't get /dev/hda1 mounted.

Try cfdisk - it'll tell you the partition type(s).

Thanks. Here is the output of cfdisk:

cfdisk 2.12r

Disk Drive: /dev/hda1
Size: 160039240704 bytes, 160.0 GB
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 19456

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pri/Log Free Space 160031.05

What are the error messages if any when you try to mount the filesystem from the command line. Are you positive it is ext3?

I get the following:

mount: /dev/hda1 already mounted or /storage1 busy

I even went so far as to just toast my data and make a new reiserfs file system on the partition. I was able to do this without any problems. However I still can't mount it. Get the same message. So then I try to unmount it:

umount: /dev/hda1: not mounted

So I try to mount again:

# mount /dev/hda1 /storage1
mount: /dev/hda1 already mounted or /storage1 busy

Make sure your not accessing /storage1 when trying to mount /dev/hda1. Also type in the entire mount command just to make sure there are no errors in your /etc/fstab file i.e.
mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda1 /storage1

Maybe make another directory and try to mount it there.

hda1 is the whole drive. If it's unformatted (which I suspect it is) it may explain why it doesn't show up in mount -l. I also suspect it's automounted at boot (might be worth checking messages and/or syslog) because it's in fstab as 1 1 which should cause automount.

If you can't resolve this maybe you should go to distrowatch.com and try to find a good forensics live CD and maybe you can unravel this mystery.

FYI:
The 1 1 in /etc/fstab is for dump and fsck.
defaults mount options:
Use default options: rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.

Thanks Michael, I checked my fstab and misunderstood something.

Let's have a look at the output from the followingThat'll tell us if a partition actually defined (successfully).

Edit: Added pipe to hexdump.

Tried that...no luck there. Thanks though.

Appreciate the suggestion. To reduce the risk of problems with /etc/fstab, I have removed all mention from it and rebooted and tried to mount but again it gives me the same error.