Our file server at home was previously running win2k3 trial version, and the trial ran out, so I decided to install linux on the computer. I checked out the Redhat site, and discovered the free version was now called the "Fedora Project" after a merger, so I downloaded it.

Here's my problem: previously there was a secondary hard drive in the computer that had all of the information on it, partioned off into three partitions. I don't see any of that anywhere, and I'm starting to be afraid I didn't read the repartitioning information thoroughly enough before pressing okay, and deleted all of it (which would put me in major trouble with my mother....)

My question is, how do I find where these partions are, if the still exsist, and is there anything special I have to do in order to access them?

try (as root) 'mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1' (you might need to create /mnt/hdb1 first) if it is a ide harddrive. if you have a scsi harddrive use sdb1 instead of hdb1.... to mount the second or third partition use hdb2/sdb2 and hdb3/sdb3

also try
fdisk -l
it will give you a complete list of partitions on attached drives.

i just booted up into dos, and ran fdisk from there, and discovered that on both fixed discs there were only "non-dos" partitions... hopefully i can recover them before my mom finds out they arent there anymore, else i might not live the month out

thanks for the help though

you may want to try deleting the partitions with fdisk, on the drive you know has fat32 data on it and then recreating them as fat partitions, without formatting

the way this works

you had a fat32 partition with data
the partition got (deleted/changed partition type/changed fs type)
as long as the partition wasn't formated the data is still on it
reintroducing a fat filesystem to the partition will allow manipulation of your old data.

if the partition was formated,
search google for undelete
and find a tool to read the deleted data, for windoze and fat32 easy recovery pro works rather well.

i stuck it in another machine and ran norton unformat on it, and managed to retrieve two of the three 20 gig partitions

i got my dads partition, which had one file in it that didnt matter if it was retrieved

i got my mothers back, which is good because i wont have an early funeral

i didnt get mine back, which means i lost about 18 gigs of data, mostly schoolwork, since alot of the other stuff is backedup

ah well, ill try unformating it again, see if that gets anything else

thanks for all your help, you guys are wonderful