How to access files on /dev/hdc1?

[Marshalus Veteran]

I have recently moved from Windows XP to Linux (Fedora Core 3) and I don't understand how to access my second hard drive? When I go to fdisk -l is says I have disk /dev/hda (partitions /dev/hda1 and hda2) 81.9GB and /dev/hdc (partition /dev/hdc1) 120.0GB, so I assume that means everything is mounted. When I go to / it lists the total free space as 164.4GB, which would be the total of the two drives.

What I don't know is where to put files so that they are physically on /dev/hdc1? Can anyone help me out?

[j79zlr]

you have to mount the drive, fdisk just lists the physical drives, mount will tell what is mounted and where.

[Marshalus Veteran]

[root@titanium ~]# mount
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
[root@titanium ~]#

[j79zlr]

/dev/hdc1 is not mounted.

[Codegen]

the proper syntax would be

mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt

[markwolfe Veteran]

Well, first thing we can try is open a terminal, and su to root (and give the password).

Then type konqueror ~ (assumes you have konqueror/KDE ennvironment installed - you don't need to be in KDE, but just have it installed).

In konqueror, open the "Devices" icon in the left pane, and you should see all possible devices.

Click the one that says "hdc1", and it should mount it for you and display the contents.

If that doesn't work, then report any error. You will need NTFS support if it is an NTFS partition.

If it works, we can go through the commandline setup.

[j79zlr]

Since Fedora is inept, you would have to recompile the kernel to get NTFS support, this is the only distro I know that makes you do this. Learn how to do it the right way, don't use Konqueror, or Nautilus, or some other GUI tool. As root first create the mount point:

mkdir /mnt/windows

mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt will not work. You need to know the filesystem for the drive. If it is NTFS

mount -t ntfs -o umask=0222 /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows

If it is FAT32

mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows

[kjordan2001]

  j79zlr said:

Since Fedora is inept, you would have to recompile the kernel to get NTFS support, this is the only distro I know that makes you do this. Learn how to do it the right way, don't use Konqueror, or Nautilus, or some other GUI tool.  As root first create the mount point:

mkdir /mnt/windows

mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt will not work.  You need to know the filesystem for the drive.  If it is NTFS

mount -t ntfs -o umask=0222 /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows

If it is FAT32

mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows

585766695[/snapback]

mount will usually try to guess the filesystems.

[Marshalus Veteran]

The drive is NTFS, left over from the old XP install, but there is nothing on it, I moved all my files onto another machine before I installed Linux just incase I hosed everything.

So what I would like to do is assign a new file system to it that can be used in Linux, from there I think I know how to get it to work. But how do I format the drive?

[j79zlr]

since you used ext3 before, I am assuming you want to use that,

mke2fs -j /dev/hdc1

[David Scaife]

Okay well after I'd finished typing most of this and went to the preview, I saw that j79zlr had already replied, so I just modified this a bit so that it isn't entirely redundant (i'd hate to think that all that time was wasted). So, unless you want to have multiple partitions on your 160GB harddrive, just ignore my post and do what he said.

But if you want more than one partition, then you can log on as root in a console, and run fdisk /dev/hdc.

Type p and press enter, it should give you something like this (this is what it gives me for my 80GB harddrive):

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          63       31720+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2              64        1056      500472   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3            1057       50660    25000416   83  Linux
/dev/hda4           50661      155061    52618104    5  Extended
/dev/hda5           50661      100264    25000384+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6          100265      155061    27617656+  83  Linux

There will probably only be a /dev/hdc1, but just do this to see if there are actually any others.

When you've done this, take note of how many there are (/dev/hdc1, /dev/hdc2, etc).

To delete the partition, press d, and then it will prompt you to enter a number, which is the number of the partition (e.g. 1 for /dev/hdc1), and repeat this for each of the partitions (again, there will probably only be one).

Now that the partition table is clear, press n. This is to add a new partition. You'll want to leave the First cylinder value blank. If you want the new partition to take up the entire drive, leave the Last cylinder value blank too. However, if you want more than one partition on this disk, then type +sizeM, where "size" is the number of megabytes (so if you want a 60GB partition, type +61440M). Repeat this for each partition that you want (and leave the First cylinder value blank each time; it will default to where the last partition finished). For the last partition, leave the Last cylinder blank, and it will default to the last one on the disk.

The default system id (Linux) won't need to be changed, so now you can just press w to write the changes to disk and exit. To make the new partitions have an ext3 filesystem, in your console, run mke2fs -j /dev/hdcX for each of your partitions.

Once that's finished, you should be able to mount -t ext3 /dev/hdcX /some/empty/dir. :)

[Marshalus Veteran]

Thanks! But something else I was working on hosed my install, so when I reinstalled I just used the setup program to create the mount points for format for me :)

But now I know how to in Linux as well.