Media\Storage Drive

General system Newbie
1

I have an extra 4 TB drive on EndeavourOS and want to use it to store files on it maybe for music or downloads or what ever? What is the best way to do this. I can access the drive but it doesn’t allow me to right click and create folders or copy anything to the drive currently. It’s just there visible and i can mount and unmount it. It’s listed as:

sdb1        8:17   0   3.6T  0 part /run/media/ricklinux/333cc16f-8f62-4d34-a83b-449de831b9b1

I tried adding it to fstab but didn’t make any difference so I’m obviously not doing it right. Never done this before because i had no need or desire.

I want to be able to right click and make directories and or copy and paste stuff to the drive? Any issue with privileges or anything. Download to it. Delete stuff if need be.

I’m just not sure whats the best use for this drive and how to make it work like anything else. Any advice & ideas.

2

Is it a removable drive or a fixed drive in the system?

I would mount it in /etc/fstab and then chown it to your user account.

However, I would use different mount options depending if it is removable or not.

1 Like
3

By default, filesystems are owned by root.

You can either chown it to your user, or, probably better, create some subdirectories as root and then chown them.

4

It s a fixed hard drive just extra. So i tried to mount it in fstab but i don’t think i’m doing it right? I’m not sure what the difference is if it’s removable or not? Also as @jonathon said file systems are owned by root. So i’m not very good at chown stuff. Not sure what is meant by subdirectories. Currently there is a lost & found folder on the drive. Do i delete that? Not sure where that is from? I can’t make directories in Dolphin so i would have to do it from the terminal as this is KDE.

Screenshot_20210529_151053

5

Right-click in there and “open terminal”. Then, for example:

sudo mkdir stuff
sudo chown $USER: stuff
6

Can we see the /etc/fstab entry?

Subdirectories are the directories under other directories. For example, if you consider a structure like /usr/share, share is a subdirectory of /usr

If it is removable, you should mount it in a way that won’t stop your system from not booting when it isn’t connected. For example, you could use a systemd-automount.

1 Like
7

I don’t currently have it in the fstab because it was giving boot problems so i took it out. I know what a sub directory is i just don’t understand okay if i add a folder Music or what to do and what is the mount called. Do i change that or leave it? Also sudo chown $USER: stuff
If i make directories in there do i have to chown for every directory i make?

example: sudo chown $ricklinux: Music

Right now it shows this with lsblk -l

/run/media/ricklinux/333cc16f-8f62-4d34-a83b-449de831b9b1

Edit:

[ricklinux@eos-kde ~]$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>             <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
UUID=C482-2876                            /boot/efi      vfat    umask=0077 0 2
UUID=688efc3d-aec6-4ca8-b945-bcda4cb1fc8b /              ext4    defaults,noatime 0 1
/swapfile                                 swap           swap    defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
[ricklinux@eos-kde ~]$
8

Also what i want when i use the drive is have the same menu’s i have normally when i right click inany folder in home.

9

For the sake a of simplicity, I am going to assume you want it to mount it at /data

Here is what you do:
Add this to /etc/fstab

UUID=333cc16f-8f62-4d34-a83b-449de831b9b1 /data              ext4    defaults,noatime 0 0

The run these commands without rebooting

sudo mkdir /data
sudo mount /data
sudo chown -R ricklinux:ricklinux /data

If the mount command fails, there is a problem with /etc/fstab

3 Likes
10

Okay i was putting in the whole line from lsblk -l. Like i say i have never done much of this stuff. So making the directory and mounting i have no issue with. I didn’t realize you have to put /data at the end of the UUID line and also the ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0.

So what happens if i add additional directories? and they are not inside /data do you have to have write another entry in the fstab and do the same chown?

11

Do i delete that lost and found folder that is on the drive?

12

You are mounting the partition at /data in this example so everything you add will be under that. If you want them to be available somewhere else, you can do that with a symlink.

For example, after doing the above, lets say you want to move your videos to this partition. You could do this:

mv ~/Videos /data/.
ln -s /data/Videos /home/ricklinux/Videos
13

No

https://www.wikitechy.com/technology/purpose-lostfound-folder-linux-unix/

1 Like
14

I think i can just delete it. Why wouldn’t the lost & found be on my other drives. I don’t use this one never have yet?

Edit: It say’s it’s empty?
Edit: Okay i see there is one on the system too?

15

You can delete it if you really want to.

I think it will just get recreated when it is needed.

16

I also don’t know much about symbolic links. So my question is how can you mv ~/Videos /data/. if you haven’t created the directory yet? Don’t you need to do that first?

17

You should already have a directory called ~/Videos and you created /data in the steps above.

If you follow the instructions above, it should just work even if you don’t understand it.

18

Well i haven’t done it yet but i understand what you are saying. ~/Videos already exist in /home.

19

That is why I qualified it with:

20

Does it matter where in the fstab you enter the data?