Mount a Drive or Partition

Debian Xfce

Mount a Drive or Partition

CDs, DVDs and USB Drives

If you put a CD or DVD in the drive, or connect a USB drive, when using Debian Xfce, it is not automatically mounted. To access drives you must mount them manually.

Partitions and Hard Drives

If there are partitions on the hard drive, or other hard drives, not used by the operating system, they are not automatically mounted. To access them, you must mount them manually.

List Drives and Partitions

To list information about drives and partitions, open the Root Terminal and type:

fdisk -l

This also enables you to determine if a drive is connected properly and working. If it is not included in this list, it is not connected properly or not working.

Create Directory to Mount Drive or Partition

Before mounting a drive or partition, you must have a directory to mount it to.

A drive or partition can be mounted to any directory. For illustration purposes create a new directory called "2" in the "/mnt" directory.

Open the Root Terminal and type:

mkdir /mnt/2

Another option is to open the Root File Manager and make this directory.

Mount the Drive or Partition

The drive or partition can be mounted using the Root Terminal, and typing:

mount /dev/(drive or partition) (directory)

Enter appropriate information. Here is one possible example.

mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt/2

Access the Drive or Partition

You can now open the File Manager, and go to the directory where the drive or partition is mounted, and access it.

Unmount

To unmount the drive or partition you can use either:

umount /dev/(drive or partition)

umount (directory)

Using the example above, it can be:

umount /dev/sdd1

umount /mnt/2

Drives and partitions are also unmounted when the computer is turned off.

Mount a CD or DVD

A CD or DVD can be mounted using the same method as used to mount a hard drive or partition. However, when you type "fdisk -l," information about the CD or DVD is not displayed. So what do you call it?

In a newer computer with a SATA hard drive, and a SATA DVD drive, the DVD drive is normally "sdc."

In an older computer with an IDE hard drive, the CD or DVD drive is normally "hdc."

For a few years, computers were made with SATA hard drives and IDE DVD drives. In these computers, the DVD drive is normally "hda."

A CD or DVD can be mounted to any directory. However, if you look in the filesystem, you will notice a directory "/media/cdrom." Let's mount it there.

Open the Root Terminal and type:

mount /dev/sdc /media/cdrom

Change "sdc" if it is different in your computer.

You can now access the CD or DVD by opening the File Manager and going to that directory.

Unmount

Using the above example, you can unmount the CD or DVD using either:

umount /dev/sdc

umount /media/cdrom

It will also be unmounted when the computer is turned off.

Gnome System Tools

If you prefer CDs, DVDs and USB drives to be mounted automatically, you can install Gnome System Tools.

Gnome System Tools include a number of tools to make computer administration easy. Examples include:

Synaptic Package Manager for installing additional programs.

Users and Groups to view and modify user privileges.

Gnome Mount which automatically mounts CDs, DVDs and USB drives.

There are also several others.

To install Gnome System Tools, open the Root Terminal and type:

apt-get install gnome-system-tools

Some programs will work immediately when installed. With others, you need to turn the computer off and restart before they work.

When Gnome System Tools are installed, CDs, DVDs and USB drives, will be mounted automatically.

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