mount partition on boot without fstab

Question

I'm running Arch Linux on my Cubietruck, an ARM board with more features than a Raspberry PI. In order to do so I have moved the OS data from the internal storage to a SATA hard drive.

For some reason if I add any entry to the fstab Arch Linux won’t complete boot properly.

I have made use of autofs but would rather have it mounted at all times.

Other than creating a script to mount the partition on boot by adding it to .bashrc, would there be a better solution?

More info from attempting to diagnose the fstab problem:

[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ cat /etc/fstab
#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
UUID=01CFD207845300F0 /media/DATA ntfs-3g uuid=1000,defaults 0 0
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ sudo mount /media/DATA
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ ls /media/DATA/temp
t1  temp  test
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ sudo umount /media/DATA
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ ls /media/DATA
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ sudo mount /dev/nanda /mnt
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ cat /mnt/uEnv.txt
console=tty0
extraargs=console=ttyS0,115200 hdmi.audio=EDID:0 disp.screen0_output_mode=EDID:1280x720p50 rootwait panic=10 rootfstype=ext4 rootflags=discard
nand_root=/dev/sda2
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ sudo vi /etc/fstab
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$ sudo systemctl start autofs
[xxxxx@cubier ~]$

This is the pastebin of the dmesg.

Answer 1

Got a reasonable solution, DE independent. By using a systemd mount as:

[xxxxx@cubier system]$ pwd
/etc/systemd/system
[xxxxx@cubier system]$ cat media-DATA.mount
[Unit]
Description = DATA partition

[Mount]
What = /dev/sda1
Where = /media/DATA
Type = ntfs-3g
Options = uid=1000

[Install]
WantedBy = multi-user.target

Thanks for the help, guys!

Answer 2

Try Gnome disks, also name gnome-disks-utility or palimpsest in order to mount correctly your partitions.

Also remember to use the UUID recognition instead of sda, sdb, etc