Howto mount USB drive in Linux

Article Index

1. Example

2. Detecting USB hard drive

3. Creating mount point

4. Edit /etc/fstab

2. Detecting USB hard drive

After you plug in your USB device to your USB port, linux will add new block device into /dev/ directory. At this stage you are not able to use this device as the USB filesystem needs to be mouted before you are able to retrieve any data. To find out what name your block device file have you can run fdisk command:

# fdisk -l

You will get output similar to this:

Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB, 60060155904 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7301 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000b2b03

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 7301 58645251 b W95 FAT32

4. Edit /etc/fstab

To automate this process you can edit /etc/fstab file and add line similar to this:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 vfat defaults 0 0

Run mount command to mount all not yet mounted devices. Keep in mind that if you have more different USB devices in you system, device name can vary!!!

# mount -a

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Comments (17)

2010-05-25 19:21:19 |Your IP address:123.238.241.xxx| abhijit lamsoge - clip mounting

Hi all,
I have clip storage system for a certain camera, i run the clip mode an execution of an interrupt.
To store this clip i have assigned /dev/sda2 of my USB drive which i have configured.but clip is not getting stored on any of the location mentioned in my device file which has both /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2..../dev/sda1 i use it to load my file system....
Can anyone suggest why my clip is not being stored ? at the desired location....

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2010-05-25 19:28:48 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| lubos - Can anyone suggest why my clip is not being stored

Could you actually past a commands your are executing? It would make it easier to understand what your are trying to do...

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2010-05-05 18:04:48 |Your IP address:209.212.105.xxx| Donald - unable to mount usb device

unable to complete install: 'unable to attach device to live guest, libvirt reported error:
virDomainAttachDevice() failed POST operation failed:(xend.err 'Device 2048 not connected

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2010-04-27 02:18:12 |Your IP address:194.146.153.xxx| wassas - directory issue

Hello all,

when i press fdisk i see my usb as /dev/sdb but when i need to mount it i have to mount this dir /dev/sdb1 & everything is ok.
what i am wondering is: why when I mount the name of the device is different than the one shown in the fdik list ?
Many thanks in advance.
wassas
Beirut - Lebanon

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2010-04-27 03:19:11 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| lubos - different than the one shown in the fdisk list

See the example in section 2 of this guide. fdisk reports a device /dev/sdb and then it also reports a partition /dev/sdb1 . One device can have multiple partitions so what you need to mount is the partition not the entire hard drive. So

Code:
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
is how we want to mount the disk / partition. In the example above the whole disc consists of a single full size partition.

Hope this helps

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2010-04-21 12:34:36 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| Covington - NTFS

Mounting a Windows XP ntfs drive - as per above +
in fstab, enter the following:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other, default_permissions, blksize=4096 00

Grabbed from Mint Linux
run mount -a
go to mnt/sdb1
and lookup files

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2010-04-10 11:21:19 |Your IP address:134.134.137.xxx| some one tired of lousy Linux

This is the 21st century and this lousy Linux still cannot autodected USB thumb drive. Why the Open Source community put up with this junk

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2010-04-07 08:22:23 |Your IP address:164.165.2.xxx| Anonymous

Use dmesg to identify which sdXX is the usb

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2010-04-02 23:16:22 |Your IP address:125.18.9.xxx| jinesh - What is - t

Can you please tell why -t flag is using for Mount...

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2010-04-05 07:18:27 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| lubos - specify filesystem in use

-t will specify a filesystem used on the partition your are about to mount

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2010-04-09 00:59:14 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| Jamil Shah Afridi - kingston usb mounting problem

Dear sir
I use your method but it still have a problem and give the error below message.

"mount:wrong fs type ,bad option,bad superblock on /dev/sda or too many mounted file system."

I am did't know that how can resolve it

Best Regards
Jamil Shah Afridi

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2010-04-02 02:47:23 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| lubos - mount:wrong fs type ,bad option,bad superblock on

hi Jamil,

the problem could be that your are trying to mount /dev/sda where you should mount /dev/sda1 . It is possible to have your block device formated to /dev/sda but that may not be your case.

so try:

mount /dev/sda1 /mount/point

or

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mount/point

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2010-02-18 17:18:25 |Your IP address:121.242.41.xxx| Anonymous

How to mount partition with ntfs file system and read write access
Linux Commands
Vim Tutorial
How to dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux
Linux lvm - Logical Volume Manager
HowTo configure NFS
HowTo mount cdrom in linux

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2010-01-18 21:19:33 |Your IP address:218.248.4.xxx| savan .... - how to mount usb drive in fedora

HELLO ................

ANY ONE CAN TELL
how to mount usb drive in fedora

IT'S 80 GB EXTERNAL DRIBVE

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2010-01-16 15:17:56 |Your IP address:124.109.41.xxx| bashir ahmed - THANKS

I thanked to ur honour for producing an amazing and beautiful with detailed clearing conception as well as for a new user like me.

Thanks again with the hope and looking for new tutorials.

with best wishes

bashir ahmed
islamabad - Pakistan

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2010-03-03 23:54:37 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| jonkwong - sda/sda1

Your mount point is /mnt/sda1
and the device file is /dev/sda

But the Edit /etc/fstab line is reversed.
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda

jk

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2009-11-21 06:07:26 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| Lubos - sda/sda1

There was small problems with fstab and now it is corrected. Thanks for pointing that out !

/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda vfat defaults 0 0

changed to:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 vfat defaults 0 0

device returned with fdisk -l command is sda ( whole disk ) and the first partition which we want to mount is sda1

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