can't mount external drive

[Baje]

I have a toshiba satellite running ubuntu 7.1. I have an external seagate freeagent drive. I am unable to mount it. lsusb provides the following output:

Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0bc2:3000 Seagate RSS LLC

fdisk -l provides:

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa4b57300

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 30401 244196001 7 HPFS/NTFS


I have tried: sudo mount -a but got the following error:
fuse: failed to access mountpoint /media/external: No such file or directory

I am somewhat of a novice. I have heard that I need to edit my fstab file but im not really sure what that means/how to do it.

Thanks for any help!

[Baje]

bummmp please help

[masticate]

Please print the results for the following:

cat /etc/fstab
ls -la /media
ls -la /media/external

[justotech]

You can also try force mounting it.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 -o force

Obviously you'll need to know what the OS calls your portable. That's what I used to have to do with my portable to make KDE like it. It turned out that I needed to do the "safely remove" option when I disconnect it from a Windows box. Once I started doing that and unmounting it with Linux it works fine.