didn't work. I tried it on the other usb ports on the computer with no luck unloaded usb-uhci and still no go

When I try to use fdisk /dev/sda it gives me the error
[root@localhost root]# fdisk /dev/sda

Unable to open /dev/sda

ok I brought the drive home and put it on my redhat machine here and it worked like a charm. It is just something with that computer at my work. My guess would be hardware related considering they were both fresh installs of redhat 9.0 and both have recieved the same updates that redhat has put out. Wouldn't really suprise me, those computers are a bunch of integrated junk. Unfortunatly that means I still have to find a way to get it working on those computers in linux, or I have to do most of my work in windows, which I would prefer to avoid.

Although when I try to umount the device it just says that the device is busy how can I stop it to unmount it? Thanks

and it is on /dev/sda right? It can land on /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc depending on whatelse you have on your machine.

oh cool!! at least you know it can be made to work

If nothing is accessing the drive, it shouldn't be busy. E.g. make sure no one is in a directory on that drive.

Like Quatsch says, it might for some reason see it futher down the line. Use /dev/sdb1 instead of /dev/sda1.

As for umount busy, I would say you have a terminal screen or window open to it. Just a guess here.

thats about all I can figure. Everything you have looks great.

Good luck
Brian1
" When in doubt, RTFM "