Starting today, likely after a system update, attempting to mount and view the device’s content from either the Thunar file manager or External Drives icon on the desktop fails and provides this message
Failed to mount "easystore".
Error mounting /dev/sda1 at /run/media/$USER/easystore: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
Manually creating a /run/media/$USER/easystore
folder and running sudo mount /dev/sda1 /run/media/$USER/easystore
will fix the issue until shutdown (likewise, I am still able to mount the drive to /mnt), but upon reboot, the problem returns.