Mount a Drive or Partition

Debian Gnome

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 Gnome, it is automatically mounted, and the File Manager opens displaying files and directories, so you can then access them. The drive also appears on the desktop. If you close the file manager, you can open it again by clicking on the drive on the desktop.

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 Partition

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

A 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 Partition

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

mount /dev/(partition) (directory)

Enter appropriate information. Here is one possible example.

mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt/2

Access the Partition

The partition will be displayed on the Desktop. You can access it by clicking on it. This will give you Read Only access.

Another option is to open the File Manager, and go to the directory where the partition is mounted, and access it. This will also give you Read Only access.

To have Read and Write access, use the Root File Manager.

Unmount

To unmount the partition you can use either:

umount /dev/(partition)

umount (directory)

Using the example above, it can be:

umount /dev/sdd1

umount /mnt/2

Partitions are also unmounted when the computer is turned off.

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