How to pick-up a new hard drive

The system is ubuntu 10.10 on a compaq system , I do need some help here.

The system is ubuntu 10.10 on a compaq system , I do need some help here.

Find out what the device is called by checking the end of the dmesg messages:
sudo dmesg | tail
It will usually be the next free letter, i.e. if your first disk is sda, the new disk usually will be sdb.
Partition the new device the way you want -- Maybe you want a partition visible to both Windows and Ubuntu, so make it FAT. If windows visibility is not needed, use ext3 or ext4.
sudo fdisk sdb (sbd is just an example, use the device you found)
m will give you help in fdisk,
Four primary partitions are available for creation, if you want more, you may have 3 primary, an extended, and as many logicals as necessary (well there is some limit I suppose).
save the new partition info with w
and you may now put filesystems on the partitions
sudo mke2fs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
... for each partition see man mke2fs for more types
Finally, mount the newly formatted partition where you need the additional space (e.g. create a directory in /mnt
sudo mkdir /mnt/backupsOrwhatever
sudo mount -text2 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/backupsOrwhatever

For this to occur at bootup, add an entry into the file /etc/fstab
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/backupsOrwhatever ext3 user,noauto,nosuid,rw,relatime 0 0

if you plug it in, the system should recognize it and you can format it anyway you want. if think they're formatted by default to windoze's fat32 or ntfs.

I'm new to this os system

I'm new to this os system

so, did you plug in the hard drive? did you look under the places menu to see if it appears there?

Yes, Yes,but no ,it did not show

I am going to ask you to run commands in the Terminal. To open the Terminal, go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal, or press Ctrl+Alt+T. To run a command in the Terminal, paste it in (or type it in very carefully), and press enter. Some commands may cause you to be prompted for your password. While entering it, you won't see any placeholder characters (like *). That's OK--just type it in and press enter.

These instructions assume that this is an external USB drive. If that is not the case, please say so. If you are not sure if that is the case, please say so.

In the Terminal, with the drive *unplugged* from the computer, run the commands:

lsusb
dmesg | tail

Then plug the drive in, wait 10 seconds, and run those two commands again. Keeping the drive plugged in, run these commands as well:

df -h
mount
sudo fdisk -l

Then select all the text in the Terminal (Edit > Select All), copy it to the clipboard (Edit > Copy), and paste it here. This should provide useful diagnostic information for solving your problem.