Hey I'am a beginner to the linux environment.I've just installed fedora core core 4 and I don't know how to mount the hard disk drives. I tried the command mount /dev/hda*/win or something like that but it said something which I didn't understood.can anybody help me solve this problem.

try this page for some options on how to mount:

http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man8/mount.8.php

also you have to have a directory in which to mount it, if it's not in the fstab... something like /mnt/nameofhd. You'll have to create this directory if it doesn't exist. mounting it should look something like

mount /dev/hda* -t ntfs /mnt/nameofhd

I'm not sure though :/

good luck with it

Welcome to the LQ!

Please search the forums at LQ. There are threads which helps to solve hard disk partition mounting problems. Since they are already here, I'm not going to post details here again.

Follow the general instructions. Other than LQ, use Google Linux Search, TLDP

If you still have problems, LQ will be here to help.

Linux treats everythings as files, even hardware. if you look at the /dev directory you can see what type of devices you have. Then you can use the device, but you need to associate it with a place in the file system, so you can read and write from it.

When you typed mount /dev/hda*/win, the system was confused. There is no device /dev/hda*/win or even /dev/hda*. Typically systems number the order of the drives such as, hda, hdb, hdc. We don't mount drives, we mount partitions of drives.

/dev/hda <- 1st hard drive
/dev/hdb <- 2nd hard drive

/dev/hda1 <- 1st hard drive, first parition
/dev/hdb2 <- 2nd hard drive, 2nd parition

But some systems label the first drive as hdc, it doesn't matter. We can find your drives and parittions by doing this:

fdisk -l

This will display like this:

Disk /dev/hdc: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 14 2624 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 2625 2755 1052257+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris


In linux you mount paritions of file systems. So you can mount /dev/hda1 but not /dev/hda or /dev/hda*. When you give the mount command you are telling the system where in the file system under / do you want to mount the new device or FS to. The normal convention is to mount devices under /mnt.

If I added a drive, it has two partitions of /dev/hdd1 and /dev/hdd2 and I wanted to mount it, I do the following:

I would need a place to mount it, so I would add a place in the /mnt directory:

mkdir /mnt/hdd1
mkdir /mnt/hdd2

This makes a point to which I can now mount my drives. Now I can mount to something.

mount /dev/hdd1 /mnt/hdd1
mount /dev/hdd2 /mnt/hdd2

I would like to conclude by saying, don't mount your swap file, that is controlled by the swapper.