Xfce Forum

M_Mynaardt

Member

From: Victoria, BC, Canada

Registered: 2010-12-12

Posts: 30

Thunar doesn't show secondary [internal] drive...

Hi!

I'm running Crunchbang Linux (Xfce edition) on my desktop computer.

Thunar seems to work just fine with USB drives being plugged in.  Thunar opens a window quickly for the newly plugged in USB drive.  No problems there!

HOWEVER, I can't seem to access the secondary internal drive in my computer.  When I bought this computer years ago (long before I discovered the joys of Linux), I had the hard drive from my recently deceased computer put in this one as a secondary drive.  If I run Gnome on this computer, that drive shows up in Nautilus (unmounted) no problems.  But I can't seem to access it with Thunar.

If I go into the terminal and type "ls /dev/sd*/" I can see the secondary drive: /dev/sdb and /dev/sdb1.  And if I run GParted, I see the second internal drive easily enough as /dev/sdb1 with the right labels and all that.  But I just can't seem to do little things like mount that drive.  So I can't actually do anything with it.

Does anyone know a trick or two to making Thunar (and other apps) readily access drives other than the main drive?

Thanks!

---

~*~  M_Mynaardt  ~*~

Xfce is a computer's friend
Always trust an OS using Xfce

Havoc

Member

Registered: 2011-02-20

Posts: 34

Re: Thunar doesn't show secondary [internal] drive...

You can mount it manually in a terminal. If you want it every time you boot the pc you can use fstab.

First you make a directory for it under /mnt like "/mnt/old_disk" or whatever you want to name it. (or even somewhere else if you want) Then you open the file "/etc/fstab" with a text editor and you add a line

/dev/sdb1       /mnt/old_disk        <your filesystem>     <options>     0 0 

The <filesystem> can be "auto" (without quotes) which works most of the times, or you have to specify it like ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, vfat, ntfs. The options can be a bit of everything and depend on the filesystem, but "auto" (again no quotes) will mount it at boot time, and "users" will make it available to all users of the group of the user that mounts the partition. "noatime" is usual as it gives a bit more speed, "notail" is often used with reiser, other are available. It will only be active after a reboot.

Then there is man fstab of course.

M_Mynaardt

Member

From: Victoria, BC, Canada

Registered: 2010-12-12

Posts: 30

Re: Thunar doesn't show secondary [internal] drive...

You can mount it manually in a terminal. If you want it every time you boot the pc you can use fstab.

First you make a directory for it under /mnt like "/mnt/old_disk" or whatever you want to name it. (or even somewhere else if you want) Then you open the file "/etc/fstab" with a text editor and you add a line

/dev/sdb1       /mnt/old_disk        <your filesystem>     <options>     0 0 

The <filesystem> can be "auto" (without quotes) which works most of the times, or you have to specify it like ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, vfat, ntfs. The options can be a bit of everything and depend on the filesystem, but "auto" (again no quotes) will mount it at boot time, and "users" will make it available to all users of the group of the user that mounts the partition. "noatime" is usual as it gives a bit more speed, "notail" is often used with reiser, other are available. It will only be active after a reboot.

Then there is man fstab of course.

Okay, I'm used to letting the GUI do all this business, so I'm taking it easy trying to figure this out.

I created the directory /mnt/old_disk easily enough.

Then I used the following (as the root user):

~# mount -t auto /dev/sdb1 /mnt/old_drive

That sort of worked.  the directory /mnt/old_drive acted like a regular folder, with the contents of /dev/sdb1.

However, I could only read/write files into /mnt/old_drive as the root user.   I wanted easier access to that drive to back up data on.

What I was wanting was to have /dev/sdb1 show up as a separate drive, with a drive icon, on Thunar.  Just like File System or a USB drive that was plugged in.  Would the method you suggested, using fstab, do that?

Thanks!

---

~*~  M_Mynaardt  ~*~

Xfce is a computer's friend
Always trust an OS using Xfce

Havoc

Member

Registered: 2011-02-20

Posts: 34

Re: Thunar doesn't show secondary [internal] drive...

I'm not exactly sure how Thunar will react. I don't use it myself. But at least you will not have to mount it each time manually. There still could be some permission issues, but I suggest taking it one step at a time.