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I have an extra ext3 primary partition that I wanted to mount for a particular Linux user account. I ran mkdir, mount, chown, and all was good. However, upon reboot I have discovered that the partition is no longer mounted. How can I mount, and keep mounted, an extra partition in Linux? The hard disk is SATA, if that matters. Thanks.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You will need to edit your /etc/fstab file to include a line detailing the filesystem, mount point and options. Here's a good post from the ubuntu forums detailing the fstab file.

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Edit the your /etc/fstab and add a new line that looks similar to the following:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/device auto defaults 1 0
  • /dev/sda1 should be the path to the device you want to mount
  • /mnt/device should be the directory you want to mount the device to
  • auto can be replaced with the filesystem type of the device you are mounting (e.g. ext3)
  • defaults can be replaced with options such as ro, noauto, etc. (multiple options should be separated by commas)
  • 1 means the backup utility dump will backup the filesystem (0 means it will NOT be backed up)
  • 0 tells fsck the order in which the filesystems will be mounted (0 means the filesystem is ignored)

For more information and a list of the options/filesystem types available, you can either 'man fstab' or visit the Wikipedia entry.

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  • Nice explanation
    – Jeremy L
    Commented Sep 11, 2009 at 0:28
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    Perhaps the most useful option is "noatime", which stops the system updating the access time of a file. This usefully increases the efficiency of the file system, at the expense of knowing if anything has accessed any particular files. I suggest if you have any files that really need this option, then mount them in another file system with noatime on.
    – Andy Lee Robinson
    Commented Jul 26, 2011 at 3:35

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