Something on the "how many disks" issue ...

Have a look in,

/proc/ide

You should find a number of sub-directories describing the current disk state.

ide0 ... 1st ide controller
ide0 ... 2ndide controller

If there not ide then they will be named accordingly.

There should also be some symlinks pointing to the directories which relate to what ever disks are there.

A cdrom may also show up there as well.


jm