[Novalug] external USB hard drives -- basics?

[Beartooth]

 	I finally bought two yesterday : a Seagate 160 GB from 
walmart, cased and ready to go; and a 250 GB I-dunno-what 
(probably Chinese generic) put into a NexStar3 case at the local 
shop.

 	The Seagate came with something windowy-looking on it; it 
plugs and plays under FC6, though not always nicely. At least, it 
pop[s an icon for mass storage onto the desktop.

 	I tried dragging /home into the file I had opened by 
clicking on the mass storage icon. It tried to copy, and failed 
not only on things like my wife's /home/tslg, but on a whole raft 
of stuff in my own /home/btth -- especially a long long list of 
files ending .xml, which I take to be my bookmarks on one or more 
browser(s). Can't have that!

 	The other one launches no icon at all.

 	I ran kudzu, then whatever it is that FC6 seems to've 
replaced its former hardware browser with. It produces a window 
labelled Devices, and the Help tab says it's HAL Device Manager 
0.5.8.1.

 	One of the listings is for USB 2.0, and one of its 
entries is called USB Mass Storage Interface; there is an item 
that says the vendor is Cypress Semiconductor Corp.

 	I'm guessing both the Seagate and the Cypress (?) drives 
need to be formatted, and that formatting means partitioning and 
providing with firesystems; for aught I know, maybe they need an 
OS installed on each -- something I have no idea how to do -- or 
even two, if I want to save topo map data from XP onto them.

 	What I want to do is copy everything unique to my wife or 
me, from half a dozen FC6 machines (three of which can dual boot 
to XP), onto one of these new drives; stash it in the safe 
deposit box; repeat with the other in a month or three; swap the 
drives physically; and repeat indefinitely.

 	I opened qtparted v0.4.5-cvs, which shows three drives 
(with the locally-assembled external connected) : /dev/sda, 
/dev/sdb, and /dev/sdc -- of which /dev/sda shows as busy, and 
the other two as available; /dev/sdb has a background with a red 
box and a M$ emblem up in the corner. /dev/sdc shows a model 
ST325082 4A, and is empty. When I look under 4A on HAL, I find 
"strlist ST325082" under the Advanced tab.

 	(I've never opened qtparted before, nor done any 
partitioning except under anaconda -- and bollixed that royally, 
as often as not.)

 	This particular machine (my current main one) has two 
internal hard drives, and dual-boots between FC6 and XPPro/SP2. 
So I'm prettu sure /dev/sdc is the external one; I'd've been 
happier if Qparted said Cypress, but that model number and the 
fact that it's empty is OK for now.

 	Surely there must be a web site somewhere by now that 
will walk me through all this elementary stuff; but I don't even 
know how to google it. Nor whether there are more than one,with 
one site better than others.

 	Clue, please?

-- 
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeon On Line
Know your enemies. They are your leaders.