mounting usb hard disc

[sed_y]

hi,
i am using Ubuntu 11.04 within windows 7 as a virtual environment using vmWare.

I have following questions


1) if i want to know about the primary hard disc, i can use

   $ ls -l   /dev

and i can see the properties under /dev/sda.
For the virtual environment, is the hard disc actually mounted? the reason i ask is that i wanted to mount external hard disc without using predefined Ubuntu GUI utility. I issued the following commands

   $ sudo mkdir /mnt/my_HDD
           $  sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt/my_HDD

assuming that /dev/sdb refers to external HDD. but it gives error

 special device /dev/sdb does not exist.

2)If I cannot do this if this is virtual environment, it should not be possible with Ubuntu GUI utility too. however, as soon as i select Virtual machine->removable devices>seagate>connect
it is mounted and i can see the details in /media.
if it is mounted, how do i find the device specs for this in /dev?

[devils casper]

You are trying to mount Hard disk instead of its partitions. You have to specify partition number along with device name assigned to Hard disk. If your hard disk has more than one partition, how would mount utility will know which partition it should mount.
Check the output of fdisk -l command and mount partitions.

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/my_HDD

[sed_y]

Hi, thanks. i tried that but it still gives same error. the reason is, sdb or sdb1 do not show up in /dev
when I disable ubuntu mounting the hard disc automatically.
when it does so, then, sdb and sdb1 are visible. but in such case,
ubuntu has already mounted the drive, so, remounting to a different location than /media gives error.
so, basically, how do i get the sdb or sdb1 entry for the external Hdd in /dev w/o GUI mount?

[devils casper]

First of all, post the output of sudo fdisk -l and df -h commands here.

[sed_y]

hi,
will reply asap as do not hv acess to my machine.
thanks

[sed_y]

hi devils,

following is the result of the commands.

sxm078100@ubuntu:/mnt$ 
sxm078100@ubuntu:/mnt$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              19G  6.0G   12G  34% /
none                  239M  624K  238M   1% /dev
none                  247M  260K  246M   1% /dev/shm
none                  247M   92K  246M   1% /var/run
none                  247M     0  247M   0% /var/lock

sxm078100@ubuntu:/mnt$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 21.5 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000afcfe

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2497    20051968   83  Linux
/dev/sda2            2497        2611      916481    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            2497        2611      916480   82  Linux swap / Solaris

as you can see, there is no external HDD or its partition, as right now, it is connected to host(Windows), and if i connect it to Ubuntu, then, it automatically connects it rather than through the bash command.

sid