Hi,

How to mount an external drive to linux computer?

zhen
Yale University

Welcome to the forum.

See this link. -->https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/mount-...-ubuntu-linux/

Usually the tricky part is figuring out the name of the block device you want to mount. Especially when you have multiple hard drives. The easiest command is "lsblk" which will list all the drives and partitions.

Plug it in. Wait a minute, and it will probably auto-mount. Or at least it will probably appear in your file manager so you can right-click on it, and choose mount.

Hello and welcome to LQ.

Not really enough information to tell.
Some distributions of linux let users with enough permissions the ability to simply plug in. Some require you to use command line while others may be restricting users to this ability.

Knowing the distro and maybe user permissions may help us answer.

At the very least, the so-called hotplug system service ought to detect that "a USB/Firewire device has just been inserted," and it should probably also be able to realize that "it is 'a disk-drive of some sort,'" and therefore to present it to you as a "/dev/sdsomethingorother"" entry.

"Beyond that," methinks, "it's really up to you, now," because, from this point forward, you really need to start making some discretionary decisions. "The device has been recognized and made available to you, more-or-less automagically." (Woo, hoo!) Now, it's up to you to take over: to decide where you might wish to mount it within your system's file-system structure.

Mind you ... if you find that you can, indeed, predict where the disk will turn up in /dev, the next step might be very easy indeed: just add an entry to /etc/mtab. So that you can easily mount the drive into an agreed-upon location.

Before plugging it in.

$ cat /proc/partitions

And after plugging it in.

$ cat /proc/partitions

The contents should change, the drive you need to mount is what changed. Probably in the output of dmesg as well. Assuming that autofs isn't a default for your distro, or overridden (defaults,noauto) in /etc/fstab. Otherwise mount, which requires root perms if the entry is not in /etc/fstab that allows a user to mount it.

$ sudo mount /dev/sdX /mnt/aspecialbutterfly

As hinted to previously by other(s).

$ mount /dev/sdX

If listed in /etc/fstab which helps fill in the blanks for a much shorter command. Or enjoy autofs which is default for a lot of non-minimal install methods for many distros.