On 3 Jan 2001, Thomas Vogels wrote:
> > Kamath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Now another thins I have been doing in the adventure of mine with > > linux/debian is adding a hard-disk to the docking station. here is the > > set-up i have. I have a 486 laptop(Compaq LTE Elite) with 1.3 GB hard-disk > > space. And a docking station attached to this lap-top. Now the kernel is > > able to access the docking system devices(or devices in the docking > > system, like PS/2 mouse ports, the newly added hard-disk via some (lap-top > > to docking station) interface, (I dont know what exactly the > > interface is but it appears to be a PCMCIA type III port) > > > > now i would like to add the new hard-drive i added to the docking bay. I > > tried the command > > prompt> mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hdb > > and got the message > > /dev/hdb is an entire device, not just one partition! > > proceed anyway?(y, n) -----> i answer y here and get the message > > should have said no here! /dev/hdb is the whole disk, not usable for > a file system. That means you would do "fdisk /dev/hdb" because you > want to have access to the whole hard drive. But then you have to > partition the harddrive, giving you devices like /dev/hdb1 and > /dev/hdb2 ... You can then create file systems on the partitions. > fdisk gives an error saying cant open file /dev/hdb when I do a prompt> more /dev/hdb i get the same error.. the additional HD is an enhanced IDE disk, jumper settings are configured as the primary slave. One thing to remember is that the additional hard-disk is accessed by the kernel via the dock interface. might this be a factor?? especially since the device naming convention hda/hdb/hdc etc probably stand for HD's connected to the mother-board directly?? does any one have any clue on this?? > If you want to have just one partition, start up fdisk or cfdisk with > /dev/hdb as the argument and create one big partition (n or new). Be > careful when partioning your hard drive. You could lose data if you > pick the wrong drive. thanks, Praveen
