NTFS external hard drive mounting problems

[urbandk]

crossposted from: NTFS external hard drive mounting problems - FedoraForum.org

Hi, I'm fairly new to fedora/linux, and this question might be addressed elsewhere. If so, I apologize.

I have an external hard drive on which I keep my music so that I can swap it among PCs, windows and otherwise. It's formatted ntfs.

If I omit this drive from the fstab file, it mounts automatically when I plug it in, but the directory to which it mounts changes depending on the order in which it's mounted (I have two other partitions that automatically mount, an NTFS for my windows boot and a VFAT to share files).

Since the directory changes, it is inconvenient for my music program, which expects it to be in the same place. No big deal; I can umount and mount it back to the proper directory from root.

But I thought to make things easier, I would include this drive in the fstab file.

I did so and designated its proper folder. I also included the "user" option to indicate that anyone could mount it.

This is great when I boot up the machine with the drive attached. It automatically mounts to the proper folder, but when I attach the drive after the machine is already booted up, GNOME pops up a message that says "unable to mount device." When I click details, no details are given.

Could you help me configure this drive so that when I plug it in, it will automatically mount to the proper location? Thanks for your help.

BTW, I'm using Fedora 10; I often connect the drive after booting because I'm using a laptop.

[Ziplock]

Hi,

Can you please send the line in your /etc/fstab relating to the drive?

Can you manually mount it? "mount <directory>"

[urbandk]

hi, ziplock. thanks. the line from the fstab file would be:

/dev/sdb1 /media/500music ntfs-3g rw,user 0 0

although i have removed it for the time being

i can mount the drive through sudo but want to give it a permanent identity for fedora's auto mount feature, for when i plug the drive into my laptop while the computer is running.

i've done a workaround of including the other two partitions in the fstab file (the two parts on my fixed hd). this makes the folder predictable for the external when i plug it in (it goes to /media/disk)

obviously, if i plug anything else in before the external drive, this workaround becomes useless.

a user over at the fedora forums suggested i use udev to create a permanent identity for the drive... i haven't had time to implement his/her suggestion yet, but that's next on my list of things to do.

if you know a simple way to force gnome's auto mount utility to put a cetain drive in a certain folder, any help would be much appreciated. otherwise, i'll work on tackling the udev instructions.

thanks.

[Ziplock]

OK, if you want to mount it in the same place each time, you need to put a label on the partition.

There are probably tools to do it under Linux, if anyone knows?

Other than that, plug the drive into a Windows box, and simply right-click and rename the drive. This will then be mounted as /media/<partition_name> every time.

udev is possible and a good solution for more advanced uses, but in your case I think this will suffice.

[urbandk]

thanks for your suggestion. I'll give that a shot.

[Ziplock]

No worries I hope it works.

A couple of things I just remembered.

If you are logged in as root, these drives don't tend to automount.
If you are a normal user and it doesn't automount, you can do it easily through nautilus (they normally come up in the left-hand side, and you just right-click->mount volume)