Ok I am a total noob when it comes to Linux. I just installed Ubuntu last night and I have been messing around with it. I see that it doesnt automatically mount hard drives. I currently have 3 hard drives and 1 DVD drive in my computer. There are 2 hard drives on the primary cable and the hard drive and DVD drive are on the secondary cable. I have been reading and I really still have no idea what to do. This is what I have so far.

Applications -> System Tools -> Root Terminal
"mkdir mnt/edrive"

These hard drives have other stuff on them but I really dont want any of it. I just want them to be clean drives with nothing on them so I can load files on to them using Ubuntu. This is the point I am stuck at. Like I said I am a total noob. Please help me! Step by step would be for ever appreciated!

Thanks, MSBeckman

In a terminal type "mount" and paste up here what response you get. Which filesystem are these other drives formatted with?

Hi there,

The relevant document is the Linux partition HOWTO:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/index.html

I won't say too much here since all that is covered in the document but the gist is that Linux auto-detects all the disk partitions and you can find out what they are by using fdisk or looking at the virtual file /proc/partitions.
For regular IDE drives you will find the drives on the primary cable are /dev/hda and /dev/hdb. The one on the secondary and the DVD are then /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd. The first partition on the first drive is /dev/hda1. DVDs do not have partitions so there will not be a /dev/hdd1 - you get the idea.
You format partitions with the mkfs command (Linux supports many file system types).
The list of drives registered to be mounted on the system is in /etc/fstab.
The command 'mount' will tell you about the currently mounted disks.

Hope that was useful,

TIM

root@linux:/home/matthew # mount
/dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
root@linux:/home/matthew #

Engmar thats what came up...