How to tackle this error?

[formlessv]

Hi,

My USB mass storage device has got a hidden partition, I believe, and I was trying to use QTParted (4.4?) to clean up the disk under Knoppix Live CD. However. when I mounted it as a HDD and clikced on the drive on the left handside panel, it gives me an error message
saying "Critical error during ped_disk_new!"

Could someone here, who has the QTParted knowledge, please explain to me what's wrong with the disk?

The disk was mounted by as /UNONFS/dev/hda

[gwb63]

Please check what your are doing. I do not think your USB drive will ever show up as hda1.

[formlessv]

Please check what your are doing. I do not think your USB drive will ever show up as hda1.

I'm talking about hda and you are talking about hda1 which confuses me, mate!

[posmanet]

hda is a drive, not a partition. The partitions on drive hda are called hda1, hda2, hda3, .... and so on.

By the way, USB drives will most likely be drives calles sda (or sdb, sdc, ...) , not hda! With hda you will adress an internal IDE drive. Take care of your data!
(Thus, partitions on sda will be called sda1, sda2, .....)

[gwb63]

formlessv .... Sorry when I responded to your query, I was typing from memory ( probably not a good idea when you are older ) and I typed hda1 instead of hda. In any case, posmonet expanded on the matter much better. The point is that you must be careful when trying to partition or format USB or Firewire drives. I have never seen any such drive show up as hda, but I have also never seen a pink elephant.....so who am I? :)