I am using Fedora 8 in a vm on vmplayer. I have connected two usb external harddrives . I have the usb device set to start disconnected so once the os has loaded, I manually connect by clicking the removable drive buttons on the toolbar. According to the text in the buttons, both have been connected. However, only one shows up in the device list or when I check to see what partitions are present using fdisk -l. I have been googling for quite some time trying to find information on this issue and have tried to search through these forums for some clues. To date I have not come across anything to help me to figure this out. I can't even determine if it is a linux issue or a vmware issue. Can anyone offer me some information that can lead me in the right direction to enable both these drives at the same time. My host os is Windows Vista.

Could it be that you are on the same mount point?

No mdanolan, I haven't even gotten that far yet. If I run the cmd: "fdisk -l" it tells me that I have only one drive (/dev/sdb) other than my internal hard disk (/dev/sda). With the other drive attached I should get one more entry (/dev/sdc) I get the following output.

[root@localhost joe]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 42.9 GB, 42949672960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5221 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001fee2

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 5221 41736870 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 41.6 GB, 41607495680 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5058 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 130 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30307800

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xed73cd85

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 256 2056288+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 257 24572 195318270 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 24573 37022 100004625 83 Linux

To tell the truth I think that the problem has something to do with vmware. I was hoping someone in the forum that may be using vmware could possibly clear that up for me. I have recently tried this with ubuntu in a vmware vm with the same results.