Thanks for your suggestion!
I've tried the mount without the filesystem type, it seems to work for hde1 wit pnt1 (at least I thik so, it didn't give me any error message so I guess it works) but it doesn't work for hde2 with pnt2.... it takes a few minutes and after that the message is:
mount: you must specify the filesystem typeOkay, I've done that but it (assuming it's ntfs) but it doesn't work either!
I also noticed that after mounting hde1 the error message when I click on the hde icon on the destop has changed into:
mount: /dev/hde already mounted or /mnt/hde busy
but I still cannot view the data, not even those in the hde1 partition...

I tried the dmesg command, the result is:
- endless lines saying: hde: task_in_intr: status=0x59 (DriveReady SeekComplee DataRequest Error)
hde: task_in_intr: error 0x04 (DriveStatus Error)
and then: end_request: I/O error, dev hde, sector 215046090
and at the bottom of all this I read the following:
NTFS-fs error (device hde2): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Unable to read primary boot sector
NTFS-fs error (device hde2): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Mount option errors=recover not used. Aborting without trying to recover.
NTFS-fs error (device hde2): ntfs_fill_super(): not an NTFS volume.

What does "not and NTFS volume" mean? (a part from the fact that I'm helpless at this whole matter...!!)

Then I tried parted /dev/hde and this is what it says:
Using /UNIONFS/dev/hde
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
Information: The operating system thinks the geometry on /UNIONFS/dev/hde is 158816/16/63. Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 503.998M.


PS: I've tried with the xp installation disk... it doesn't work, I immediately get a message saying that it cannot even find my hard drives and that I should check if they are correctly connected... I think Knoppix is the only way I've got left...