Windows Veteran Trying to Mount Ext USb HDD

[johnson-stuart2013]

Did a Ubuntu install on a dell inspiron. Have relevent drivers, need help with the mount command process.

[GaryTheCat]

I have a dell inspiron - I just plug my USB HDD in and it pops up as a little button on the left.

That probably doesn't help much......

[Bashing-om]

johnson-stuart2013; Hi ! Welcome to the forum .


The external usb drive should be auto detected, and shown in the file manager.

The guts and the gore of attaching file systems,.... well ->
These will give you a good introduction to mounting, and file systems in the ubuntu world:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab
https://help.ubuntu.comunity/Mount/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FilePermissions
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountlinux

By all means, kick back, read, and enjoy.

As you have questions or things you do not understand, by all means, -we are here - ask .

the longest journey begins
with this first step

[spencer the great]

List the filesystems on your computer:

df -m

which lists the filesystems and tells you how much disk space is used in each one.
Find the one with the used/available/percentage sizes that looks like your hdd (it's in megabytes; df -k for kilobytes, df --block-size=1G for gigabytes)
Look in the first column ("Filesystem") for the corresponding row
It should begin with "/dev" (no quotes)

Create a folder where you want the files to appear (I prefer "mnt" in my home folder):

$ mkdir mnt

Mount the drive (the filesystem is the one you found earlier):

$ sudo mount FILESYSTEM mnt

replace FILESYSTEM with the filesystem file you found earlier with df.
And you should be all set!
To remove it safely, type:

$ sudo umount mnt

[coldcritter64]

...
Create a folder where you want the files to appear (I prefer "mnt" in my home folder):

$ mkdir mnt

Mount the drive (the filesystem is the one you found earlier):

$ sudo mount FILESYSTEM ~/mnt

replace FILESYSTEM with the filesystem file you found earlier with df.
And you should be all set!
To remove it safely, type:

$ sudo umount ~/mnt

note the ~/ is for your home folder. Cheers

Edit absolute paths are not necessary, your original post works Perfectly OK - no changes needed. If you are not working in the home folder, as is the default behaviour, the full path can make a difference to the mount command. My post is not really a correction more an addition. Cheers