Mounting hard drive
 

I want to be able to use my first hard drive in Linux. It is FAT 32 partitioned and has Windows 98 on it. Some early attemps to mount it didn't work, and ended up with messages like mount point doesn't not exist and special device does not exist. I think it's called hda, but I'm not sure. How do I find out? Also, how do I set it up so it mounts automatically when I boot up? Please be very specific, as I am new at all this. Thanks for the help.

You need to do something like the following.

mkdir /win
mount -t TYPE /dev/hda1 /win

Your TYPE should be 'vfat' if I am not mistaken. You could use 'msdos' but I beleive you would be restriccted to 8.3 filenames. You must also have support for this built into your kernel. Many default kernels have this set up for you. but if you receive a message that says something like "filesystem not supported" then you may have to recompile your kernel.

You cannot mount hda because that is your actual hard drive. You can only mount a partition. If this windows partition is your primary master then your hard drive would in fact be hda.

hda - primary master
hdb - primary slave
hdc - secondary master
hdd - secondary slave

Default windows installation will most often be found on the primary master on the first partition. If this sounds like your setup then the example at the top of the page will be exactly what you need to do.