Second drive (XP format)

akadad · 06-26-2005, 10:55 PM

I am currently running Redhat 9.0 on a fairly new e-machine 2.60. I have Linux as the only o/s and running off my c: drive. I also have a second hard drive that I had on the system when running XP that is partitioned into 6 drive letters. Now that I've switched to Linux I can't access the second drive. This is where all my music, pictures, etc. is, and I'd really like to save this data. Any ideas?

edong23 · 06-26-2005, 11:54 PM

yep...

open a terminal and type:

su
password for root

cfdisk /dev/hdb

# this should show you what partitions are on the disc. then you will have to mount them with
# something like:

mkdir /mnt/hdb1
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1

# if you dont find anyting in cfdisk, then are you sure you set the master and slave right on the discs? is it on the slave, or on the master of the primary.... i am not sure of your setup.. but should work.

J.W. · 06-27-2005, 12:28 PM

edong23's advice is spot-on. My only comments would be that the mountpoint (eg, /mnt/hdb1) will need to exist first in order for the mount command to succeed. Additionally, and depending on where the second drive is installed, the device name may not necessarily be /dev/hdb. Specifically:

/dev/hda = primary master
/dev/hdb = primary slave
/dev/hdc = secondary master
/dev/hdd = secondary slave

Just use the device name that corresponds to where the drive is located. Good luck with it and Welcome to LQ! -- J.W.

edong23 · 06-27-2005, 06:18 PM

word... and i did say to make the mount point first... but you can name it whatever you want like

mkdir /mnt/buggar

then mount it there but using the device name is better... some distros use /mnt/cdrom and stuff but i use the device like /mnt/hdc so there is no confusion. and the mount point doesnt have to be in mnt if you dont want it to be. you can just mount it to a home directory if you wnat like

mkdir ~/hdb1

or buggar

mkdir ~/buggar

then
mount /dev/hdb1 /home/*you*/buggar

cool huh..

edong23 · 06-27-2005, 06:29 PM

also i might add if you edit your /etc/fstab to add that device and mount point .. (just follow the syntacs of everything else in there) you can mount it with a simpler command like

mount /mnt/hdb1

this will look at the fstab and see that it is going to mount /dev/hdb1 to /mnt/hdb1

cool and you can add the user to the permissions part and then user can mount it,, or kde quickdisk thingy i dont use kde so i cant remember what it is called. cooll have fun