I am running SUSE 11.1 on a 80Gig IDE HDD, I have added a 160 SATA HDD which I wish to use as storage.
fdisk reports it as /dev/sda1 - W95 fat 32 LBA.
What would the fstab entry be to make the disk mount automatically on boot, so that it shows on the desktop ready for use. thanks.

By implication, your 80G IDE hard drive shows up as /dev/hda1--I had thought that all modern distros reported all harddrives as sdX ---oh well.

regardless, you would specify the drive in fstab exactly as fdisk reports it. All you have to do is mimic the other entries in fstab, except that the mount point will be different. I would make this something like "docs" in your /home/username directory and then make a soft link int he desktop folder.

But first, get it partitioned and formatted the way you want it. If you are not using Windows, then format it with your favorite Linux filesystem.

If in doubt on partitions, i would recommend creating ONE partition using ~ 1/2 the drive---leave the rest empty (unpartitioned) for future expansion.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks pixellany, sorry I did not make myself clear. Fdisk reports the second HDD, 160 Gig SATA as /dev/sda - W95 fat 32 LBA, when it is connected & in the system with the drive containing the SUSE Linux OS - the 80 Gig HDD, this is reported by fdisk as /dev/sdb.
Strange as you say, I thought that the primary drive, that containing the OS would be reported as /dev/sda, & a second drive as /dev/sdb. any way thanks, I understand what you are saying. Rgds.

The kernel drivers were rewritten for recent kernels. One layer uses the the scsi code so PATA drives now show up as /dev/sd## devices.

You can run "kdesu yast2 disk" to access YaST2's partitioner program. This will be easier, and may catch some mount options (like codpage=) that you may miss or not know which to use.

If this is an internal disk, you should reformat it in a Linux file system, unless you are dual booting and want to share files with your Windows installation. For an external drive, if you won't be sharing files with a windows system, then reformat it also.

If you don't want to reformat the drive, unclick the Format option in the partitioner program. Enter the mount point you want, and which options you need.

For an internal drive, add the mount options "uid=<your_username>,gid=<your_group>,fmask=0117,dmask=0007,iocharset=utf8"

For an external drive, you don't want it to be mounted when you boot up. Add the "noauto" option. When you boot up, and the disk isn't present, booting will fail and you will be dropped into the recovery shell. Also, for external drives, you can't count on the same device node being used. One time it may be /dev/sdb1. The next time, /dev/sdc1. For this situation, either let the auto mount system take care of it, or use the UUID or PATH in the first column of the fstab file.

The YaST2 partition program allows you to do this as well.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks jschiwal.
I will try this. Rgds.

Thanks jschiwal, you recommended that I re partition the SATA store disk & that reminded me that SUSE auto recognized NTFS, so I converted the File system to NTFS. This solved the problem immediately, the disk mounting on boot & showing on the desktop & could be used OK.

I remember in the days of DOS most books gave a comprehensive list of the command line commands, the functions & switches,
Where can I find this for Linux also for distro specific commands, also ditto for fstab. I have seen some very brief lists in some books but they are not very comprehensive, ie they don't show the command "kdesu yast2 disk" that you quoted, by the way this utility can be started from an icon in yast also.
I am thinking that this information would be very useful to me if it included explanations of the functions as to exactly what they do, is this info available in man pages, if so how can I access it?
Thanks Rgds.