howto mount a hard drive connected using a USB.

Hi

First, you need to decide where you want to mount the drive, and create the mount point. For example, if you want to mount it on /media/maxtor, then you would type the following command in a terminal. Avoid putting spaces in the mount point. The system will ask for your password, type your password in and press enter, even though you won't see anything while typing the password, it is ok.

sudo mkdir /media/maxtor

Next, you need to know what the device name is. One way to do this is to type

tail -f /var/log/syslog

and then plug the drive in. You'll see several messages go by, including one towards the end that should look similar to

May 21 21:38:22 gandalf hald: mounted /dev/sdb on behalf of uid 1000

On my system, you can see that mine is called /dev/sdb. (gandalf is the name of my computer)

Press ctrl+c to stop the tail command

Now you have the info to mount it using the info above would yield a command like. You need to substitute your device name and mount point

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb /media/maxtor

The only other thing that may happen is that you don't have the ntfs-3g driver installed. if that is the case, you can install it with

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

and then try mounting again.

Good luck.

hello,
go to synaptic package manager( System--->Administration--->Synaptic Package Manager)
search for "usbmount" and "pmount".
mark for installation.
click 'Apply'

then plug in your usb hard drive.
this package will automount your external hard drive.
hope this help....

Thanks for the advise. When I read the error message, it tells me:
"$Logfile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0) Failed to mount '/dev/sdc1: Operation not supported Mount because NTFS is marked to be in use.
Choose one action: Choice1 Windows: ...
Choice2 Don't have Windows: use the force option. For example type the command line: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /media/NM Maxtor 110GB -o force"
My drive name is actually "NM Maxtor 110GB"
When I run this command using 'sudo', I get a "mount -h" listing.
Is there a method to force the drive to be "not in use"? I do not have access to windows.

You're getting the help message because having the spaces in the path name makes it seem to mount like you've entered the command with the wrong syntax

I think mount will allow you to put the name in single quotes, like

'/media/NM Maxtor 110GB'

If it doesn't like that then you need to escape the spaces like this

/media/NM\ Maxtor\ 110GB

Good luck

I have been working this all day. I installed the USBmount and pmount, no help. It shows up in device manager but won't mount it is ext3 file system. I reformatted it today from NTFS and lost all my backups in trying to do this.I don't know what to name it. I have the properties in device mmanager but it dosen't specify a name. Please help! I can't backup or use it at all. Windows found it fine today before I reformatted it.Should I go back to NTFS on it (only option in my XP version.