Hi I recently got an 1 TB external USB (connected and powered) Hard Disk. After getting it I partitioned it from the default 1 to 4 partitions. The default was ntfs and still is the other 3 partitions are ext4 However on my Thinkpad t60 running Ubuntu 9.10 this external HD powered and connected by a USB 2 cable loads and then crashes. Am not sure why ?? at present i have a 500 gig HD on board which has the following partitions that show up on logging in /dev/sda7 22G 12G 8.2G 60% / /dev/sda5 99M 51M 43M 55% /boot /dev/sda2 20G 2.0G 18G 10% /media/SharedT6N /dev/sda3 208G 174G 24G 89% /media/MiscT6N /dev/sda9 165G 114G 43G 73% /home along with these 5 partitions a 6th swap (a separate partition) is also opertional. Two additional partitions - the win OS and a second root do not load up. ** am wondering why this HD may be crashing in an earlier thread there was a mention of a max of 16 partitions that could operate at once. Now am assuming that these are 16 active partitions and not those that do not load up. Load up meaning that those lying dormant (unmounted) till a user calls them into being or not formatted so not operational. ** any advice ** I am unmounting two more partitions to try the disk again. To see of that makes a difference thanks ram