"Mount: special device does not exist"

[scorp123]

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mount: special device /dev/sda16 does not exist

Are you sure you got the numbers right? Try to list your partitions with fdisk -l ... e.g.: sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
... When I do this here on my laptop I get:

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Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          17      136521   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              18       12161    97546680    5  Extended
/dev/sda5              18         990     7815591   83  Linux
/dev/sda6             991        1355     2931831   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            1356       12015    85626418+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8           12016       12161     1172713+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

... So as you can see /dev/sda8 is the last partition Linux can see on my harddisk, there is no /dev/sda9 for example.

Can you please try above command on your system?

[scorp123]

It's most definitely sda16. It shows up ...

OK, so far so good. What about the entries in /dev ... Can you please do this: sudo ls -al /dev/sd* ... and check if sda16 gets listed there? Example from my laptop:

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 sudo ls -al /dev/sd*
Password:
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 5 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 6 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 7 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda7
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 8 2007-09-01 08:56 /dev/sda8

[scorp123]

Aha. I ran that command and /dev/sda16 does not appear in it.

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brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  0 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  1 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 10 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda10
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 11 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda11
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 12 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda12
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 13 2007-09-06 04:52 /dev/sda13
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 14 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda14
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 15 2007-09-06 09:16 /dev/sda15
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  2 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  3 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  5 2007-09-06 09:16 /dev/sda5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  6 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  7 2007-09-06 09:16 /dev/sda7
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  8 2007-09-06 09:16 /dev/sda8
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  9 2007-09-06 05:51 /dev/sda9

Does the error persist if you reboot your system? During boot the Kernel should read the partition tables and write or remove entries in the /dev filesystem (which is a virtual filesystem controlled by the kernel) depending on the hardware the kernel can identify. So if after a reboot /dev/sda16 is still missing we have to find out why the kernel can't (or doesn't want?) to see it.