hey Thinkster, thanks for the reply, you are right i'm confused with regards to the partitions. now that i remember when i installed my distro i created mount points and not partitions, thanks for clarifying that for me. here is the output of fdisk -|
/sbin/fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 12473 100189341 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 12474 12498 200812+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 12499 15685 25599577+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 15686 17062 11060752+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 15686 16960 10241406 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 16961 17062 819283+ 82 Linux swap
here is my /etc/fstab
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-hdb6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u
bject_r:removable_t,managed 0 0
/dev/hdg /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u
bject_r:removable_t,managed 0 0
hope this can help, thanks in advance for the help