having an external hard drive issue with linux
 

i'm a linux noob (well, 2 1/2 mos of experience anyway) and i'm running mandrake 9.2, dl edition. i bought a 120 gb external phantom premier, installed and mounted it, but for some reason, whenever i save to the mount directory i specified (ie /home/<me>/sda) it saves to a directory of the same name on my external hard drive. also, even when i unmount the drive, if i remove the usb cable and reboot, it tells me that there is a file structure instability problem, and i can't boot the box without having the hard drive hooked up and powered on. any suggestions?