well, i tried the cp command, but whats the placeholder for everything in linux?
cp -Rr /mnt/hda6/ /mnt/hdb7/h/ or
cp -Rr /mnt/hda6/* /mnt/hdb7/h/* does not work
What filesystem is on your hard drives?

If you wanted to copy all of the /mnt/hda6 directory to the h directory on /mnt/hda7 if both devices are mounted, running as root you should be able to use:

cp -Rp /mnt/hda6 /mnt/hdb7/h

Note: it's -Rp
not -Rr

For example if I want to copy my pictures from my linux storage partition /mnt/hda9/pics to /mnt/hda1/temp, my windows partition what I would do is:

cp -Rp /mnt/hda9/pics /mnt/hda1/temp

I do get an error doing this copy (error: changing permissions) because /mnt/hda9 is an ext3 linux filesystem, but /mnt/hda1 is fat32, but the files are in fact copied to my windows partition.

Also regarding your udma drives, it's not the drives, it's your mobo ide controller that will determine what udma mode your system will support.

why don't you boot to your cd and add this "cheat code" and see what happens, boot up with:

knoppix idebus=66 [plus any other necessary cheat codes]

then do a:
hdparm -t /dev/hda
and grep dmesg for ide again
dmesg | grep ide:

HTH

rock