Where's my disks..?!

[WhelkMaster]

Hi folks,

I'm very much a newbie with this Linux (Fedora 7) stuff but I'm already addicted!

I am, however, having a problem with exploring the contents of my hard drives.
Is there an equivalent program to "W*****s Explorer"? If there is, where would I find it?

Thanks for reading, I expect I'll be asking more questions in the not too distant!
Hopefully I may be able to help by answering some too. You never know

Cheers.

*** UPDATE ***

OK I found File Browser. Seems to work for me.

But why cant I see my 2nd hard drive?

Cheers.

[unchiujar]

First thing to remember is that Linux is not Windows. A lot of things are done in alternate(some would say better) ways.

Linux treats file systems in different way than Windows. You will not have C,D,E - Z drives but instead a file system that contains all the drives into certain mount points.

This link will explain it better.
I haven't used Fedora 7 yet but it might do it automatically for you.However, if that's not the case then the link above will explain how it's done.
If you want more information just google "mounting drives in linux."

Hope this helps

[WhelkMaster]

Phew! Thanks for that one!

I've just confused myself by reading lots of stuff about mount and fstab files.

As I understand it, I need to add an entry to my "fstab" file which describes my 2nd hard drive? Is that correct? Once this is in place the mount command should be able to mount the volumes on the drive and enable access to them?

Back to more reading..!

Cheers.

[unchiujar]

Linux numbers drives this way(Fedora 7 use sd[letters] - it's in the Release Notes):
disk 1 - sda
disk 2 - sdb
disk 3 - sdc
etc

Partitions on each disk are addressed by a number after the disk:
Partition 1 on disk 1 is: sda1
Partition 3 on disk 3 is: sdc3



You should probably add a line in fstab that looks like the line of code below. Be careful, fstab is critical for the system, back it up before you change it.
Read this for more info

EXPLANATION OF OPTIONS
[disk] = the drive and partition following the rules above (e.g sda1,sda2,sdb3,etc)
[mount point] = a directory where the partition will be mounted. I recommend using a folder in your home director something like this would probably be good enough /home/your_user_name/MyWindowsData

vfat - FAT32 partition
ntfs - NTFS partition (choose one depending on the type of partition you have)

auto - mounts on boot
user - allows non-root users to mount the file system
noexec - disallow executing binaries off the partition - change to exec if you want to execute binaries(start program) off that partition.
rw - read and write
0 - don't backup
0 - don't check with fsck

/dev/[disk]  	[mount_point]  	vfat  	auto,user,noexec,rw 	0 0

If you've done everything right the next time you start the computer the contents of the drive should be available in /home/your_user_name/MyWindowsData
Although this is more complicated than the C,D,E thing you can easily see how it's a lot more flexible.

[WhelkMaster]

Thank you so much!

Thats enabled me to get my second hard drive up and running.
I had to change the type to ntfs (vista partition) but it works no worries.

I used "mount /dev/sdb /vistadrive" and it seems to work fine.

Thanks for your time and effort, I really appreciate the help.

Now I suppose I should make backups of everything, just in case

[unchiujar]

One thing I should mention, NTFS support was sketchy at one point in linux (Microsoft for obvious reasons doesn't release the specs so it had to be reverse engineered) so you should check if it's safe to use the drive from Linux, especially that I heard (not sure though) that Microsoft made changes to the NTFS in Vista.
Google might help or someone on the forums.
If you plan to use that partition exclusively in Linux I recommend switching it to ext3 or some other Linux format.

EDIT:
Found the info on the NTFS project

[WhelkMaster]

Thanks again. Thats very interesting reading.

The partitions seem to be working OK for now but as you suggest, for the sake of reliability, I think I'll wipe them and create new linux ones.

I once lost all my mp3 and photo collection. Don't want to go there again!

Cheers.

[unchiujar]

If that ever happens again you could try to use several programs for recovery.
First thing I would do is make a bit by bit image of the drive with dd, then try to recover the files with foremost.
The files are still there even when you are unable to access them.

Even if the partition table is wiped or some other damage happens to the drive you have a chance of recovering the files because foremost looks at the sequence of bits(files have certain headers/footers) on the drive(image) to decide if it is a file or not.
Also you can try TestDisk

[bigtomrodney]

Linux numbers drives this way(Fedora 7 use sd[letters] - it's in the Release Notes):
disk 1 - sda
disk 2 - sdb
disk 3 - sdc
etc

Just for the record, sda/sdb/etc indicates a SCSI disk or an emulated SCSI disk (such as USB drives and S-ATA). IDE drives are indicated using /dev/hda etc.

[devils casper]

Just for the record, sda/sdb/etc indicates a SCSI disk or an emulated SCSI disk (such as USB drives and S-ATA). IDE drives are indicated using /dev/hda etc.

new IDE Drivers and SATA drivers are using same code in latest kernels and assing sdx name to IDE disks too. Feisty, Fedora 7 and Sabayon assign sdx name to IDE disks.

Driver developers claim that New IDE Driver will increase IDE disk performance. i didn't find any performance boost yet except one major problem.
All Linux distros are using earlier version of GRUB v 0.97 or 0.95. ( GRUB 0.xx is not being developed and GRUB 2 is under development). GRUB still recognize IDE disks as hdx and GRUB re-install is very tricky in IDE disks now.