/dev Partition Naming Rules

Good Day All . . .

I need some information. My system has multiple hard drives. All but one is used for backup and storage.

My #1 drive is /dev/hda but is partitioned hda1, 2, 3, and 4. My #2 drive answers to the title /dev/hdb and has one partition while my #3 drive on HDC2 answers to the title of /dev/hdd1. It has only one partition.

Anyone tell me why dev/hdb is not /dev/hdb1 for mounting purposes? I am having invalid partition problems on this drive. The answer could help. I searched and found that deleting and reformating was the answer to the invalid partition table problem. Guess what? I still get the invalid partition table response from 'fdisk -l /dev/hdb.'

Thanks in advance . . .

/etc/fstab
Make a back-up copy first.
edit fstab maunualy.
the hdd1 hda and so one will remain the same, as those point to the drives hardware.
the other like the description to the side of the them that list /media/c or /media/windows
Those you can change.
I used to have it like this before it got setup automaticly.
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/storage
/dev/hdc2 /mnt/win98
The SuSE 9.2 puts them in a folder called /media for some reason.
Hope this helps.
Joey

Originally posted by appsdev@Jan 26 2005, 18:51
I need some information. My system has multiple hard drives. All but one is used for backup and storage.

My #1 drive is /dev/hda but is partitioned hda1, 2, 3, and 4. My #2 drive answers to the title /dev/hdb and has one partition while my #3 drive on HDC2 answers to the title of /dev/hdd1. It has only one partition.

Anyone tell me why dev/hdb is not /dev/hdb1 for mounting purposes? I am having invalid partition problems on this drive. The answer could help. I searched and found that deleting and reformating was the answer to the invalid partition table problem. Guess what? I still get the invalid partition table response from 'fdisk -l /dev/hdb.'

I would try yast > system > partitioner and see what you can do with that.

Thanks for the info. I tried both.

bandit: I could not in any way get 9.2 to acknowledge the existence of hdb1. Editing fstab generated "not a valid device" error. Nothing would pick it up.

BigShell: The partition tool gave me a warning that hdb had a bad partition table and that nothing I did would be permanent. I went to the Expert button and used the second option for a complete delete. After many warnings I was able to delete the partition. I created a hdb1 partition and rebooted. All for nought. The new partition was not available.

I read that the linux file management tools were none destructive because of so many variations in the OSs. Prior to my asking for help here, I learned that the DOS FDISK /MBR was a destructive app and that it completely wiped out the corrupted information. I did not want to try and root out one of my seven or eight year old DOS floppies so I went back to basics.

It was a very long process. I used the OEM disk utility to low level format the hard drive. This wiped out EVERYTHING. The format took about four hours but it worked. The corrupted information is gone and I have a hdb1 partition after using the partition tool in YaST.

Another thing that I learned. My Computer is very unreliable. It does not report the current state of the system but it reports the 'config file' state of the system. It may be reliable in that context but not as a diagnostic tool.

Thank You both for your time and effort. I appreciated the help.

it could be that the hdb drive's firmware doesn't do the block mapping correctly, or has problems with the bios

try changing the drives from master and slave to cable select, or vice versa... I find with Western Digital I *had* to use cable select, whereas with Maxtor master/slave worked best!

Also, change LBA in the CMOS as this will impact things a lot.

Paul

bandit: I could not in any way get 9.2 to acknowledge the existence of hdb1. Editing fstab generated "not a valid device" error. Nothing would pick it up.

I have no idea which actualy it could be, I just gave examples.
The ones you listed are the ones for your system.
You should NOT change those..
As it will result in the error given..
I mentioned you can change the devices labled locations.
the "/mnt/drive1 or /media/drive1" part.. Not the "/dev/hda1" part..

Hope this helps clear up the issue..

Cheers,
Joey

bandit: Thank You for the clarification. My fault. I learned a while ago some problems with mounting locations. For the past few years, I have used /?????1 and /?????2 for the locations and labels of my backup drives since I change distros and the mounting places are not common. So far my choice has not caused me any problems.

speculatrix: By coincidence my drive is a maxtor 40. I originally tried to switch it from primary slave to secondary slave to force a system reconfiguration but it still kept the same hdb title. I did not try to change it to Cable Select. If the problem reappears then I will certainly try that approach.

My CMOS settings are LBA. I deleted the drive and reinitialised it and restarted. Guess what? The title remained the same.

The low level OEM format seems to have corrected the problem. For now. If it returns I will try some more CMOS variations but I do think (and I don't know that much about linux) that the physical hard drive's internal MBR was the fault. That said, I don't know what could have caused it. It could have been a mounting/umounting error on my behalf.

Again, Thank You Ladies and Gentleman for your help. This is a good forum for us newbies.

In short:
hda is the primary IDE drive, or master
hdb is a slave. Slave means the jumper is set to slave AND disables the hd controller
hdc is the first secondary IDE
hdd is the slave of the secondary IDE.

Slave means: no use of the internal controller. Some incompatibilities exist between manufacturers or series: a slave could refuse to work using the controller of the first drive. Most CDROMs set as first drive masters would prebent the slave to work. Solution is to find out which drives can act as masters and control a given slave and put those as first (aka master).
Another problem to find out is if the first (master) controller can transmit the bios requests to the slave.
It is always better to set the IDE drives as AUTO in the bios and let both bios and OS decide if they can handle them.
As a rule, put CDROMs as slaves of a first hard disk.

hda or hdb are no devices, they only can be called as such by low level programs as fdisk.

/dev/hda1 is the first partition on the first master (or single primary), and is a device.

If you can't mount /dev/hdb1 and get a partituion type or format error, this can be because:
- the bios is not set to handle that drive
- the master prevents the bios to correctly handle the drive
- the drive is >32GB and was originally fdisk'ed on a bios with large blocks support (which is not the logical block addressing)
- the drive has a hidden copy protection scheme preventing it to work on other OSes that the one it was sold with.
- many other possibilities.

Your 3rd hard drive on /dev/hdd1 is odd, unless your CDROM is /dev/cdrom (or /dev/cdecorder) in SuSE Linux parlance, but only are symbolic links to the real /dev/hdc (no number as there are no partitions on the device).

Guess all you can do is to switch some cables and jumpers. Start with only one IDE, get it working, halt, add a seond, reboot .... rinse, lather, repeat. And keep the bios on AUTO.

Originally posted by lvlamb
...Slave means: no use of the internal controller. Some incompatibilities exist between manufacturers or series: a slave could refuse to work using the controller of the first drive. Most CDROMs set as first drive masters would prebent the slave to work. Solution is to find out which drives can act as masters and control a given slave and put those as first (aka master).
Another problem to find out is if the first (master) controller can transmit the bios requests to the slave.
It is always better to set the IDE drives as AUTO in the bios and let both bios and OS decide if they can handle them.
As a rule, put CDROMs as slaves of a first hard disk...

[snapback]65085[/snapback]

I'm curious why you say rule of thumb put cdroms as slaves of hard disks. I have never done this. I keep hard drisks with each other on the primary and then cd-roms with each other on the secondary. I have always heard/learned that the cd-roms will slow down the access speed of the hard drives. Just what I have learned.

This post is rather long and cluttered looking, but seemed the best way to respond to some things I don't undertand or disagree with.

Originally posted by lvlamb+Jan 28 2005, 03:48 PM-->

I don't understand what you mean here. I've built a lot boxes and on every box I've ever built (with a second drive on the first controller) I set a master and slave by jumpers. This has never disabled the controller.

Interesting. Can you point to some discussion on this? I've never seen that and would like to know under what conditions it can happen.

I have only put a 'hard drive' as a slave to a cd/dvd once. The 'hard drive' was actually a zip drive, but it preformed well as a slave to a cd master.

Good rule if you want to slow down your hard drive. As I understand it, the controller will only work at the speed on the slowest device it is accessing. If it isn't trying to access the cd/dvd you way not pay a speed penalty. If you were playing a cd and trying to load a file from the hard drive, the hard drive would be accessed at ata33 speed (same as the cd drive). Installing from a cd/dvd could be slowed down if you are writing to the hard drive on the same controller. Running two programs where one goes to the cd and one to a hard drive on the same controller will slow things down. At least it used to be this way. Maybe something has changed and I missed it. My rule is to put cd/dvd/zip on controllers without hard drives if possible. I do agree, if you must put a cd/dvd/zip on a controller with a hard drive, making the hd the master is best.

They are devices. Look under /dev and you will see them.
As far as mounting, you don't mount a device, you mount a file system. The /dev/xxx only tells mount where to look. I have found a device that has partitons and that (in my case and a few others I have talked with) mounts only when I *don't* specify a partition number. It is my zip device on SuSE 9.2. In previous versions, I mounted it at /dev/hdx4 (x depending on where I had it hooked up). In SuSE 9.2 I *have* to mount it as /dev/dhx in order to see it.

<!--QuoteBegin-lvlamb@Jan 28 2005, 03:48 PM
Your 3rd hard drive on /dev/hdd1 is odd, unless your CDROM is /dev/cdrom (or /dev/cdecorder) in SuSE Linux parlance, but only are symbolic links to the real /dev/hdc (no number as there are no partitions on the device).

I do think I would put the hard drive on the secound ide controller as the master (making it hdc) and make the cd/dvd the slave (hdd). Doing it now would mean extra work (fstab entries and (possibly) the yast software source would need changing). The /dev/cdrom [cdrecorder | dvd | dvdrecorder] symlink(s) (which ever the system useses) would need changing.
I would probably leave it as is, but make sure my slowest, least accessed hard drive was connected there and change fstab as needed.