Mounting external USB drive in the Linux terminal

Temporarily mount and unmount

Find the name of the block device to be mounted:

lsblk

Mount the block device. Assuming that you would like to mount /dev/sda1:

udisksctl mount --block-device /dev/sda1

You will be prompted your password, and the drive will be mounted to /media/user/drive assuming that user is the username of the current user, and drive is the name of the block device.

To unmount the block device:

udisksctl unmount --block-device /dev/sda1

Automatically mount as the current user at boot

Get the UUID of the block device:

sudo blkid

Create the mount directory. Assuming that you would like to mount to /media/user/drive:

sudo mkdir /media/user/drive

Change the owner to user. Assuming that the current user is user:

sudo chown user:user /media/user/usb/drive

Edit fstab:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add a new line at the end of the file. Assuming that the UUID is 12345678-90, and the filesystem is exfat:

PARTUUID=12345678-90 /media/user/drive exfat defaults,uid=user,gid=user,nofail 0 0

nofail tells the system to proceed with booting even if the specified filesystem fails to mount.

Save and exit, then test the configuration:

sudo mount -a

References

https://askubuntu.com/questions/37767/how-to-access-a-usb-flash-drive-from-the-terminal (https://askubuntu.com/a/37775)

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