Score:0

USB hard drive fails to mount on boot

pl flag

I have 3 identical make/model external hard drives connected by USB, and /etc/fstab looks like this:

[...]
UUID=1b83f30d-cb05-460f-ba98-50912a639330   /mnt/disk1  ext4    auto,defaults,nofail    0   2
UUID=b2653db0-5233-4812-a5af-bf3a8944db80   /mnt/disk2  ext4    auto,defaults,nofail    0   2
UUID=c02d2990-61b6-432d-9b20-b95643607065   /mnt/disk3  ext4    auto,defaults,nofail    0   2
[...]

After reboot, df -h looks like this:

[...]
/dev/sdb1       3.6T  3.1T  313G  92% /mnt/disk1
/dev/sdd1       3.6T  3.0T  484G  87% /mnt/disk3
[...]

As you can see, disk 2 fails to mount after every single boot or reboot. Trying to mount it manually with sudo mount /mnt/disk2 results in mount: /mnt/disk2: /dev/sdc1 already mounted or mount point busy. BUT! If I then wait, 2-3 minutes after boot time, I can mount it just fine with the exact same command. So, the drive will mount eventually. What I'm trying to find out is

  1. Why is the disk unable to mount for the first several minutes after boot and
  2. How can I reliably ensure the disk mounts automatically? I don't even care if the machine takes 2-3 longer to boot, as long as the disk is mounted eventually.
guiverc avatar
cn flag
I see no OS & release details provided; the software stack you're using is what I'd start with, and you didn't provide that. You've also told it to ignore failures (nofail; or from the man page for my release - "*do not report errors for this device if it does not exist*" ie. taken from `man fstab`)
oldfred avatar
cn flag
Is it also slow booting? The nofail option is best combined with the x-systemd.device-timeout option. Like `defaults,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=4` I would run fsck on partition and also check what smartmontools say (in gnome Disks) say about drive. http://askubuntu.com/questions/642504/ubuntu-14-04-is-not-booting-normaly-after-a-manual-hard-boot/642789#642789 & https://askubuntu.com/questions/983619/s-m-a-r-t-data-no-longer-available-in-ubuntu-16-04-disks-application
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