Linux

Hi there, I'm having a bit of a strange problem which I would appreciate some help with.

The Problem:
I have two external hard drives, but I'm borrowing one off my parents to copy data too (one of mine, which is identical to theirs - WD MyBook 300g - is on its way out).

Fedora 9 recognizes both my external hard drives, but when I plugged my parents' one it it just insists that it "cannot mount drive".

Backstory:
I have always used Windows. Last week my external hard drive with all my music and data on it stopped loading (explorer would crash on every computer I tried it on).

My friend suggested I try Linux - my inexperience meant that, instead of using a Live CD, I tried to install it msyelf.

This screwed up my Windows Boot, so I can now only get into fedora 9.

To my suprise, Fedora recognised my hard drive with barely any effort - I was overjoyed to see all my data, so I thought I'll borrow my parents HD which is identical and copy over the data.

However, as stated above, I am unable to mount their drive for some reason. Both my other external USB 2.0 drives mount fine, I have tried thiers in the same USB ports and with the same power supply etc, to no luck. Their drive also works in Windows (I just tried it at work now!).

Can anyone help me here?

Do you get messages in the system log when you plug it in or unplug it? That would be /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog or possibly some other file in /var/log (do an ls -lart to see what was modified recently -- sorry, I'm not a Fedora person).

or check dmesg before and after you plug it in, to see what messages the kernel has thrown out about the drive:

dmesg |tail

plug drive in

dmesg |tail

i would do this.

without the disk conected. execute
fdisk -l
plug the disk, give it a few secs to lado the usb modules. and execute the same acommand again

you didnt tell if you are trying to mount all of the at the same time

or maybe, its an ntfs and you havent installed the ntfs tools