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Auto-Mounting Secondary Drives

Deprecation notice

19/02/2024 ~ If you are using the :testing branch, this procedure is no longer needed as by commit e25e48b. media-automount-generator will handle automounting in non-removable devices (BTRFS and ext4 supported only).

Partitions will be mounted under /run/media/media-automount/PARTITION_UUID.
You can place a custom named shortcut to the partition with:

sudo ln -s /run/media/media-automount/PARTITION_UUID /mnt/CUSTOM_NAME

Warning

  • You may lose data on the drive(s) or result in an unbootable system if configured improperly.
  • Do not use the NTFS, exFAT, or FAT32 filesystems for game library storage.

MicroSD cards automatically mount without any manual intervention required on Bazzite.

Follow this guide at your own discretion and make sure to read the entire document relevant to your method, so you do not miss anything!

Formatting a disk

Warning

This will wipe all existing data on it

Note when formatting in KDE Partition Manager

Make sure you set permissions to everyone.

Use a disk graphical user interface like KDE Plasma or GNOME Disks to format your drive. We recommend formatting secondary drives to BTRFS or Ext4. BTRFS is our recommended filesystem, but Ext4 may be better for older spinning mechanical HDDs as secondary drives.

Creating a secondary drive directory and where to mount drives?

Note

Drive directories should be lowercase with no spaces for best practice.

Attention

/var/mnt should NOT be the path, but create a new directory in either /var/mnt or /var/run/media/.

  • /var/mnt/... for permanent drives
  • /var/run/media/... for removable drives

You can make a directory in /var/mnt/ by opening a host terminal and entering this command in a host terminal:

sudo mkdir /var/mnt/games

The drive will now be mounted in a directory known as games.

Note

The games directory can be named anything you desire that fits best practices.

Permissions for the drive

sudo chown $USER:$USER /var/mnt/games

Note

If you plan to reformat the partition, remember to edit the mount point and "Remove" the mount path before you reformat! If not you will have to manually edit /etc/fstab.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) Methods for Auto-Mounting

Warning

Do not set up auto-mount, unmount then format a drive! It can confuse the software you are configuring drives with. Instead, remove the auto-mount first before formatting the drive.

Alternative Methods (CLI)

Other ways to setup automounting:

  1. media-automount-generator.

  2. systemd.mount units.

  3. Editing the /etc/fstab file.

Command Line Interface methods are intended for advanced users, and it is recommended to research one of the two methods outside of this documentation.

Emergency Mode After Mounting?

This video tutorial shows how to recover from your mounting mistakes.