I have an empty hard drive on my linux system. How can i access it to put stuff on it? I keep trying to make a link to it but it dosnt work. Thanks
RH9, Gnome

Is the drive partitioned and formatted? If it is, then it should be a matter of mounting it. If it is the slave drive on the first IDE controller, and you are trying to access the first partition then the command would be:

mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/drive

Replace 'drive' with whatever you want to call it (just make sure the folder exists or the mount command will yell at you)

If you need help with partitioning or formatting let us know.


slight

Its already partitioned and formatted

This is what i got from /sbin/fdisk -l
The drive is hdh right?
When i do mount /dev/hdh1 /mnt/hdh,
it says the drive does not exist. am i doing the command wrong or something?

Disk /dev/hdh: 6505 MB, 6505712640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 790 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdh1 1 790 6345643+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hde: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hde2 14 3552 28427017+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde3 3553 3649 779152+ 82 Linux swap

Wait i figured it out but i accidentally named the drive /mnt, LOL. How can i change its name? also what commands will show me the drive size and other drive info? thanks

After you mount it, you can see how much free/total space you have on it by using kdf. Kdf is a KDE app that displays a graph of such things.

Thanks that helped. Now i can see that it is mounted. How can i name the drive?

what do you mean by naming the drive???
if you referring to the mount point, well simply just name it something else...
such as
mkdir /mnt/seconddrive
or
mkdir /mnt/extradrive
or whereever you are mounting to...it doesn't have to be in the mount folder itself
just when you remount it specify it....such as in an example above type:
mount /mnt/extradrive
or whatever the case is.

I wanted to name it something, I think i did it cuz now when i look at it, it shows the name i gave it but how can i make a link in the taskbar like the floppy and cdrom so i can drag and drop files to it.? thanks

Try making a link on the desktop to where the drive is mounted, then drag that link onto the panel.

I did something like that but i have to mount it in the console manually everytime i want to use it.

Make a startup script to mount it. Then whenever you reboot it will mount it.

There may also be an option in your distro's Control Center (if it has one, I think I remember you said you were using RedHat in the past, could be wrong tho) to auto-mount the partition.

I think you can also add entries to fstab to make partitions mount at boot-time. You might wanna try looking at that.

Yes i was thinking the same thing. Thanks

Instead of mounting the filesystem from the partition manually every time why don't you just put an appropriate entry in /etc/fstab so it mounts automatically on boot up - you can always create a symlink to your desktop later once youve got it automatically mounting on boot-up properly.

I tried to modify the fstab and the mtab or whatever the other one was and it didnt work I was just screwing around so maybe i didnt do it right.

If i put " /dev/hdh1 /mnt/mydrivename " in my fstab, that should work right?