I purchased a Maxtor external HD.
I thought all I needed to do was plug in the USB cable, turn on the power and mount it.

I made a directory under /mnt called exthd.

I modified fstab to read "/dev/sda2 /mnt/exthd auto noauto,users,rw 0 0"

I tried to mount it using "mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/exthd" and all I get is /dev/sda2 is not a block device"

So I tried mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash and it would mount. (thats the place my flash drive mounts on) but, I could not write to the external HD.
So I rebooted and now when I try to mount it I either get need to specify filesystem type for sda1 and not a block device for sda2.

My flashdrive and camera worked just fine when I plugged them into the 4 port USB thing I am using. Although I have to use them as root and from command line because KDE doesnt do anything.

How can I access this external hard drive?

You don't say how you partitioned and formated the external drive. If you haven't partitioned and formated, you can't mount it.

Crud!
I didnt know that. I thought it worked like a plugin USB device.
So I have to partition and format it?
How do I do that? With cfdisk or something? I typed in cfdisk as root and it does not see the drive.
Thanks

cfdisk /dev/sda

If I do that. Does that mean my camera and flash drive will not work anymore?
Thanks.

Don't do that if your flash drive is plugged on sda!
Do that with the hd you want to format plugged on sda.
Be sure that it's your hd on sda (check the size!)
If it is your hd that is plugged on sda, then only your hd will be affected.

Ok, I do see the drive and the correct size under cfdisk /dev/sda.
So i just need to partition it and format now?
Do I use NTFS like it says or should I use the same as my main HD, reiserfs.
What partition scheme would be good for a strictly storage drive?
Thanks.

What do you want to store?
If you are only using linux and will only use linux to access the drive and are not sure about the size of your paritions, I suggest lvm, but if you don't know what it is, it is probably too much hassle for what you want to do.
If you want to use the data with windows computers, FAT32 is the way to go.
If you have a lot of small files, xfs is good (but not for windows).
If you want your data to be safe, use reiserfs.
There are a lot of other options, so you must make your choice yourself because it's your data.

This is a Linux only system so I will probably go with reiserfs.
Should I use a few different partitions for backing up different things or something?

After I partition and format this drive will I be able to access the drive if I format and install a new version of slackware on the internal drive?
Thats basically why I got the drive so I can backup stuff and upgrade to slack12 on the internal drive.

Thanks.

It's hard to tell because people do a lot of different things.
I think the most used filesystem is ext3 on linux.
I have an external hard drive and I made a FAT32 partition for linux/windows stuff and 2 ext3 partitions for other stuff.
It depends on the size of the disk and the stuff you plan to put in.
reiserfs has a reputation of safeness. It is a journaled filesystem, so you can recover errors (for example if power down occurs while writing on the disk). ext3 is also a journaled filesystem.
If you need speed, some other filesystems may be more suitable but reiserfs is reasonable is most situations.
If you want minimum hassle, just put one big partition, or maybe 2.
Another strategy is to partition just one bit of the disk for current needs : for instance you have some movies or documents and it takes 5 gigs ; you make a partition of 20 gigs and leave the rest unformated. 6 months later, you realize your documents don't fit in 20 gigs anymore. Then you create another partition of 20 gigs and move some data. Then 3 months later, you go visit a friend and he asks that you bring some movies, but he only uses windows. No problem, you make another 20 gigs partition FAT32 and move the movies there and so on.
Using your hd will tell you what you need.

After I partition and format the external HD, will I be able to access it when I install a new version of slackware on the internal drive?

I used cfdisk to partition the drive and still cannot mount it.
I keep getting you must specify a filesystem type and dmesg says "UMSDOS: msdos_read_super failed, mount aborted.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 64543
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 08:00."

cfdisk is just for partitioning. You must format after.

Ok, ive got it.
Went like this.....

Plugged in USB plug and power for external hard drive,

Created a mount point with "mkdir /mnt/exthd"

Modified /etc/fstab to read "/dev/sda1 /mnt/exthd auto noauto,users,rw 0 0"

Ran CFdisk and partitioned the drive,

Ran "mkfs.reiserfs /dev/sda1" to format the drive,

Ran "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/exthd" to mount drive.

and thats it.
Did I leave anything out?
Thanks everyone for all the help.

You did a great job. You did everything just like it should be done. Congratulations and enjoy your new storage space. Have fun!