Mounting – Linux

Sometimes a USB external drive may not mount in Linux, could be because the the harddrive is getting to that point of I am going to give up soon so you better copy off all of the data!!!!..

Anyway, here are some basic guides to mount a external harddrive if it has not been auto mounted by udev

If you do a dmesg on the command line

dmesg 
 
[ 4454.972580] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Maxtor 4 D040H2           0811 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0                                                            
[ 4454.973682] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0                                                                                            
[ 4454.980992] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] 80043264 512-byte logical blocks: (40.9 GB/38.1 GiB)                                                                  
[ 4454.983014] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled                                                                                  
[ 4454.983021] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through                                                                                   
[ 4454.985201] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled                                                                                  
[ 4454.985205] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through                                                                                   
[ 4454.985209]  sdc: sdc1                                                                                                                              
[ 4455.022214] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled                                                                                  
[ 4455.022218] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through                                                                                   
[ 4455.022224] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk

and get something like the above, the most interesting part is the sdc:sdc1, because this tells you where the device has been placed onto the /dev directory structure. You could also use the

lsusb

to find out where it was placed in the USB structure as well and try to mount from that device entry, but I just use the /dev/sdc ones normally, both will work through.

To mount a external drive, you need to find somewhere to place it, e.g. /mnt and then create a directory (that is not there already)

cd /mnt
mkdir USBEXT

and then mount the USB external drive, most are the type of V/FAT types so you just specify that in the type (-t) parameter

mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /mnt/USBEXT

the /dev/sdc1 is where it was placed and the /mnt/USBEXT was where I want it mounted and the -t was VFAT.

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