HI Chris and Thomas: I had to go out so abandoned the project for a while. According to the suse hardware tool the drive is HPFS/NTFS and mounted as: /dev/sdb1 /media/usb-storage-Y33T7NYE:0:0:0p1 With Knoppix I could write a test.txt file to it and create a directory easily enough, although it wouldn't allow me to copy directories, now back in SuSE I can't write to it or remove the directory. I can see it though. With the mount comand Thomas: krell4:~ # mount -o gid=$GID,uid=$UID,defaults /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, or too many mounted file systems The problem is that there is already some windows rap (with a silent c) on the drive from school that I can't get rid of as they need ti. If I could format it I would be fine. Perhaps I should quite and look for another option for the soon to be lost weekend? -- De Omnibus Dubitandum