mounting usb with sda1

[xzwerm]

I've always mounded my usb drive with /dev/sda1 now i installed Slackware 12.2 and there is not sda1 only sda and it doesn't work. whats going on? is there a way to get sda1 back? or do i use something else?

[bigtomrodney]

I believe since the driver changed a year or two back even IDE drives are referred to as /dev/sd? too, so your own harddrive might be using that identifier. The drive itself doesn't have an sda style name bound to it, they are assigned as you attache more devices. They go in order, e.g. sda, sdb, sdc, sdd etc and the partitions on each device are the number.

The best thing to do is insert the device and immediately run dmesg for a clue as to what drive it might be. Here's an example where I plugged in an external drive which ended up being identified as /dev/sdh

[  803.936019] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[  804.070268] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[  804.071019] scsi9 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[  804.071223] usb-storage: device found at 5
[  804.071226] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[  809.068495] usb-storage: device scan complete
[  809.069224] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA  MK6037GSX        0D   PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
[  809.070980] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] 117210240 512-byte hardware sectors: (60.0 GB/55.8 GiB)
[  809.071705] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Write Protect is off
[  809.071708] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Mode Sense: 00 38 00 00
[  809.071711] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  809.072582] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] 117210240 512-byte hardware sectors: (60.0 GB/55.8 GiB)
[  809.079817] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Write Protect is off
[  809.079821] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Mode Sense: 00 38 00 00
[  809.079823] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  809.079830]  sdh: sdh1
[  809.108120] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Attached SCSI disk
[  809.109989] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg9 type 0

[Freston]

Yeah, bigtomrodney is right, that can happen. And I admit it's terribly confusing, specially when you dual boot. I believe, but I'd have to check, that it is a kernel setting though. I have no such confusing stuff on my Slack 12.2 boxen.


You can also mount devices per hardware address if you want more reliability and/or flexibility.
First, lets see your

dmesg|tail

Run this a few seconds after plugging it the device.

[valemon]

Your usb is possibly /dev/sdb. Also fdisk -l would give you a clue.

[vonbiber]

I've always mounded my usb drive with /dev/sda1 now i installed Slackware 12.2 and there is not sda1 only sda and it doesn't work. whats going on? is there a way to get sda1 back? or do i use something else?

if your internal hard drive is SATA then /dev/sda1 is the name of the
first partition on this hard drive

Best way to find out the device name of your external usb drive is
after you inserted the drive (wait for a few seconds then)

cat /proc/partitions

look at the last columns
after eliminating the internal device names (hda* or sda*)
the next (sda* or sdb* or sdc*) should be the names for the last inserted usb drive

or you could also as root

blkid

this command tells you also the filesystem type

[xzwerm]

thanks i got it, it is sda but it wasn't mounting before because i guess the drive was damaged and had to be formated. somthing must have happend during the installation, but it is sda. thanks again