Cant unmount and format my hdb

Hey,
I'm on SuSe 9.1
I have two hard drives
hda has SuSe on it
hdb I want to format completely so I can use it for music
it used to have Linux on it while I had Windoze on hda but I decided to get rid of it and put Linux on there instead, and i used to have SuSe (an unstable version of it) on hdb

So when I try to unmount each partition, it wont allow me to, says I need root acces. Okay. Log in as root. Unmount. Can't, says devices and/or resources are busy at this time.
Can't unmount using KDiskfree, Yast, or command line fdisk.
According to KDiskfree /dev/hdb1 28.6MB /dev/hdb3 27GB
according to command line
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 232581 117220792+ 83 Linux

I've tried but I've just ended up confusing myself even more with 100 different sets of instructions on how a linux newbie is to do this.

make sure that you do not have any windows or terminals open that are cd'd into hdb. If you still can't unmount it, try

Code:

ps -xwff

and look for anything that is running with the path of hdb1 in it. Try to unmount it again

Code:

umount /dev/hdb1

I have had the same problem and most of the time it was that I was cd'd into the directory or one of it's subdirs by accident. :oops:

Okay, no terminals in hdb open, nothing accessing it that i can see, kdiskfree and everything are closed.

Quote:

linux:~ # umount /dev/hdb1
umount: /mnt/hd: device is busy
umount: /mnt/hd: device is busy
linux:~ # ps -wxff
Warning: bad syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
14762 pts/1 S 0:00 su
14763 pts/1 S 0:00 \_ bash
14772 pts/1 R+ 0:00 \_ ps -wxff
1 ? S 0:05 init [5]
2 ? SN 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
3 ? S< 0:00 [events/0]
4 ? S< 0:00 \_ [kacpid]
5 ? S< 0:00 \_ [kblockd/0]
6 ? S< 0:00 \_ [khelper]
7 ? S 0:00 \_ [pdflush]
8 ? S 0:02 \_ [pdflush]
10 ? S< 0:00 \_ [aio/0]
411 ? S< 0:00 \_ [reiserfs/0]
826 ? S< 0:00 \_ [kcopyd]
9 ? S 0:00 [kswapd0]
168 ? S 0:00 [kseriod]
1932 ? S 0:00 [khubd]
2781 ? S 0:00 [hwscand]
2874 ? S 0:00 [khpsbpkt]
2891 ? S 0:00 [knodemgrd_0]
2911 ? S 0:00 [knodemgrd_1]
3860 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/syslogd -a /var/lib/ntp/dev/log
3867 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/klogd -c 1 -2
4289 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/dhcpcd -H -D
-N -t 999999 -h linux eth0
4693 ? Ss 0:01 /sbin/resmgrd
5278 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd -o PidFile=/var/run/sshd.init.pid
5640 ? S 0:08 /usr/sbin/powersaved -d -e /etc/powersave.conf -a resmgr -v 3
5929 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/lib/postfix/master
6064 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/nscd
6074 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
6331 ? S 0:00 /opt/kde3/bin/kdm
14144 ? S 1:25 \_ /usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp -br vt7 -auth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-kCgMbL
14145 ? S 0:00 \_ -:0
6839 tty1 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty --noclear tty1
6840 tty2 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty2
6841 tty3 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty3
6842 tty4 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty4
6843 tty5 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty5
6844 tty6 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty6
13490 ? S 0:00 gpg-agent --daemon --no-detach --keep-display /bin/bash /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
14012 ? S 0:00 [kjournald]
linux:~ #

Most of this is still greek to me, what would I have to stop and how would I do that?

Thanks very much for your help.

Mmm, better try:

Code:

lsof | grep /mnt/hd

kdeinit 14275 blacknyx 133r DIR 3,65 1024 2 /mnt/hd
kdeinit 14275 blacknyx 134r DIR 3,65 12288 11 /mnt/hd/lost

Also another suggestion would be to try and format the drive useing a live cd like Knoppix;

dylunio

The second field is the number of the process (PID) using the /mnt/hd. I assume it is a typo because they are the same in your case. Kill that (those) process(es) and you are able to unmount.