Can't Start Gentoo from USB Hard Drive

[MrSpecial]

I installed Gentoo onto my USB external hard drive, I performed a networkless install and everything installed fine. However, when I try to boot from this external hard drive, I get the following error:

root (hd1, 0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xde

... (two lines of unreadable characters and symbols)

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

Press any key to continue...

I press a key and it takes me to the Grub menu, where I can select to boot Gentoo Linux. When I try to boot from Gentoo Linux I just get the above error. The Grub menu is almost completely unreadable, there are lines all over the place, making it hard to read the text. I am very new to linux and would appreciate any help you could give me.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and welcome.
Did you format this drive during the install? Did you change it to a different type?
boot up the Gentoo LiveCd and post the output of these commands.
fdisk -l (lowercase L)
more /boot/grub/grub.conf

[MrSpecial]

I formatted according to the installer's recommended layout; I believe it is as follows: a small partition for swap, a small ext2, and a large ext3 partition.

When i entered the fdisk -l command(into terminal, right?), nothing come up.
I entered the more /boot/grub/grub.conf command and got the following:

No such file or directory.

[MikeTbob]

You need to try this command as the root user
su -
(root password)
/sbin/fdisk -l

[MrSpecial]

Is there a default password for root? I never entered one for the LiveCD, and the password for my installation doesn't work. What should I enter for the password?

[MikeTbob]

When you installed it to the HD, it should have asked you to set a root password. I guess try using sudo
sudo /sbin/fdisk -l

[MrSpecial]

When I entered sudo /sbin/fdisk -l I got a bunch of information about both my internal(sda) and external hard drives(sdb). For my external hard drive it showed three Linux partitions. However, when I entered the more /boot/grub/grub.conf again, the file/directory doesn't exist.

[BraveSirRobin]

When I entered sudo /sbin/fdisk -l I got a bunch of information about both my internal(sda) and external hard drives(sdb). For my external hard drive it showed three Linux partitions. However, when I entered the more /boot/grub/grub.conf again, the file/directory doesn't exist.

I had a similar problem with a hard drive install which might not be related but here goes..

I had installed to hda1 which is formatted as ext3.

I had the same error as you. I took me a while to notice that I had the ID types for my swap and / the wrong way round.

In fdisk that would be option t and type 82 for the swap and 83 for the main partition. Also make sure that you have marked your partition as bootable.