i have all my files backed up on my other partion... "/dev/hda5" but when i try to access it i get this error message "Nautilus has no installed viewer capable of displaying "/dev/hda5". " how can i get access to the partion? i have important files in there... thx

first,
use mount |grep had5
if the output contains something like:/dev/hda5 on /mnt/aaa
then you can visit /mnt/aaa to access your files
if there is no output at all,then you need to mount it first
good luck!

Create a new directory in /mnt directory with any name say "backup". Mount your partition /dev/hda5 using
# mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/backup
Hope you'll be able to see the files stored there.

What kind of a file system is /dev/hda5? If you did something like this:

Then /dev/hda5 itself is a big data file. It is not an ext2 or ext3 file system and cannot be mounted. All is not lost. You can access this type of a file using:

Perhaps you intended /dev/hda5 to be an ext2 or ext3 file system, mount it, then do a backup to a file on this file system, for example:

Hi,
Login using root administrator. You can see all your partitions & their types using
# fdisk -l
ie., ( l => lowercase L)
You'll come to know what type of file system it is & if the code is written like ext3 is 83, swap is 82, VFAT95 is b & VFAT(LBA) is c. You can get the code list using fdisk command. See help fdisk --help & try out finding your partition type.
If the partition you have mentioned is NTFS., you cant read it. Its only supported in 2.6 kernel
Try out these & let me know. All the very best.

[root@.........root]# mkdir /mt_pt
[root@..........root]# mount /dev/hda5 /mt_pt
[root@..........root]# ll /mt_pt

...execute these steps and u'll hopefully see all the contents

now to un-mount it .. issue..

[root@........root] umount /mt_pt.

if u want to copy the contents on ur partition /dev/hda5 permanently, then...

[root@.........root] mkdir /data
[root@..........root]# mount /dev/hda5 /mt_pt
[root@..........root]# ll /mt_pt
[root@.........root] # cp -rf /mt_pt/* /data
[root@.........root]# umount /mt_pt