Harddisk meyhem

I'm have quite a frustrating time with my Maxtor 250gb External Portable hard disk..,

1. The System Recognizes it, but cant access it
2. even in ET 2 format

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I Have tried to format it to EXT2/NTFS with Partition Magic, however when I try and use Gparted it gives me this msg:
could not stat device sdb - no such file or directory

EDIT:
I'm also not able to use any USB Sticks either

 

OS?

 

Hem, linux I presume... But what distribution ? (and version ?)

 

linpus linux,
the default that comes with the AAO
EDIT : Unbuntu

 

Hello, still no solution found.. the device is just not found or recognized...
Will continue trying.

Thanks anyway

 

aha, ive just gotten somewhere,
i downloaded nautilus, and when trying to mount my drive (caller 'pstash' for personal stash),
it gives me this msg:
$LogFile indicates unclean shutodwn (0,0) failed to mount'/
dev/spd5': If you have windown then disconnect the
external devices by clicking on the 'Safely Remove
Hardware' icon in the Windows taskbar then
shutdown Windows cleanly. Choice 2: If you dont have
Windows then you can use the ' force' option for your own responsibility. For example type on the command line:
mount -t ntfs -3g /dev/sdb5/media/pstash -0 force Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file: /dev/media/pstash ntfs3g defaults, force 0 0

Now, I dont have windows and note: how my drive is NTFS (which i have reformated to be so),
Should i put that command line into the terminal? (i know ntfs is read only.)
will try now with a et3/2 USB stick.

 

No, ntfs is read/write under Linux with fuse/ntfs-3g ->
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

You must have the fuse module and the ntfs-3g package on your system :

If you don't have this package, you can install it with "yum install ntfs-3g"

And yes, you cant mount sdb5 with (in a terminal):
# mkdir /mnt/ntfs
# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb5 /mnt/ntfs

EDIT :
Oups ! i missed that :

You must connect your external device on a XP or Vista system, and shutdown that system with your device still plugged in (in order to clean the filesystem)