can't find usb gard drive

[argon99]

Hello All Merry Christmas.

I have an older lenovo T400 laptop. I also have a 2.5 inch disk that is in a usb case. I need to run fdisk and put a file system on it. I only have one drive in the laptop that is designated /dev/sda. So when I plug in the usb disk I would expect it to be /dev/sdb. And that is where the problem is. It doesn't come up as /dev/sdb. All the lights come on and I am sure that the drive is good but the system just doesn't find it.

I don't have a clue anymore why it is not found, or rather not designated sdb. I am sort of an old fashion kind of guy and am not all that familiar with GUI tools. i use the command line. How do I find what this drive is designated as so I can run fdisk and out a file system on it? TIA

I'm very tired and I bet that is 90 percent of the problem.

[cwsnyder]

Use the terminal command fdisk -l (that is a lower case L) If it is recognized as a disk drive, that will list it. If you are having problems finding it, try the terminal command lsusb -v If you can copy the information of either command here, we may be able to help.