How can I restore the missing /dev/hdb1 & 2 entries(links?)? I've been using a 9.2 Pro box for going through a stack of older hard disks with various partition arrangements without using YaST to mount them. I also have been using external USB and Firewire drives as backups for various machines as a test. I connected the external drives at various times with hdb installed as well as when hdb was not installed. I just tried a drive as hdb and had trouble using mount to a /mnt directory and it says that hdb can't be mounted and is a 'special'(?) drive. I checked fdisk -l /dev/hdb and it shows all the LINUX types in the listing. I tried YaST's partitioner and while the partitions are shown I can not assign mount points. /sys/block/hdb exists as does /dev/hdb but /dev/hdb1 & 2, both primary partitions are missing. /dev/hdb5 inside an extended partition can be mounted as normal. It could be that udev is working and something is wrong with hdb1 & 2 but I tried Knoppix and I have no trouble mounting all three. I've gotten a feeling that the hotplugging may have done something. I did try the same drive in the external USB and Firewire cases and I noticed a long list of drives in /dev/disk/by-id which appear to be the IDE drives. In /dev/by-path I see what appears to be the external drives even though they are not attached. Can I just erase the contents of /dev and have them created at startup? Is that a really bad idea?