hi eric; thank you for your response; i'm just now able to get back to this drive; i am running redhat 9.0 df command does not show the ext drive only hda1,2, etc i followed your advice and made these commands to 1- make sure the sda was not mounted and 2 put the space in before the /dev in the fdisk command. here is the output [root@bigdog root]# umount /dev/sdb umount: /dev/sdb: not mounted [root@bigdog root]# fdisk /dev/sdb bash: fdisk: command not found so i did a "man fdisk" without the quotes, and all the appropriate how-to's on fdisk came up. ? thanks for your patience. i will copy the previous email below in case you didn't recall them, but not to jumble up the above. -- betty i. www.WebCanine.com research & information for people who care for dogs =================================================== betty wrote: >> answer to questions; >> yes, that drive already has 3 partitions on it, but i assume i am going >> to be deleting them, that is fine, they are an old redhat that i'm not >> using now. now i am using redhat 9.0. yes, it is attached by a usb. >> >> although the gui says that the the drive is /dev/sdb , when i try to use >> fdisk/dev/sdb i get this; >> >> [root@bigdog /]# fdisk/dev/sdb >> bash: fdisk/dev/sdb: No such file or directory The shell (bash) is telling you that it can't find the command sdb in the fdisk/dev (relative to the current) folder. Of course it can't. That command should be fdisk /dev/sdb >> >> when i looked in /dev, sure enough there was no /sdb >> there are a lot of /sdbr, /sdbs, /sdbt, etc but no just plain sdb's. That's a different problem. What distro are you running? >> there is an sdb in mnt That is where the drive would be mounted. >> [root@bigdog mnt]# ls >> cdrom flash floppy sdb >> >> so i thought i'd try the command from mnt but i got: >> >> [root@bigdog mnt]# fdisk/sdb >> bash: fdisk/sdb: No such file or directory Two things wrong with this. First is, like above, you need a space after fdisk. Second is, you never want to modify partitions while they're mounted! What does the 'df' command show you? >> sooo, how can that be? i thought i was on a roll.... :\ >> >> how can it be in the gui as /dev/sdb but not in the command line when i >> LS under dev ???? Not sure about that. -- -Eric 'shubes' --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss