Help with mounting USB drive - probably user error

Support & Help Requests
1

Using an Intel PC running 22.04 (Waiting for 24.04.1) with a WD external hard drive. Mostly use the disk for saving data files. Been using this combo for years with no problems. But recently decided to add another user. Initially the new user account could not access the hard drive. So I ran Gnome Disks and changed the Mount Options to add "Mount at System Startup". Now both users can access the drive. But when I try moving a file to Trash, I get a message that the file cannot be moved to the Trash and asks if I want to delete the file instead. Where did I go wrong and how can I fix it? Disk is formatted NTFS because I move it between system. Should it be formatted to EXT?

Thanks for any help,

Bill

2

Forgot to mention: when I changed Mount Options the Mount Point changed from /mount to /mnt.

Bill

3

As far as I remember, files from my USB-mounted drives never go to 'trash can' and are permanently deleted instead. Nevetheless, they say there is a fix:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/nwilpd/how_to_enable_move_to_trash_for_external_hard/?rdt=61239

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=314100

Good luck!

2 Likes
4

I can confirm that the issue is the lack of a hidden User-specific Trash folder.

Given that your default User ID is 1000, the requirement for your own Trash is ".Trash-1000" on any device where you want that ability.

Look at the /etc/passwd file to identify the ID # (nnnn) of the second (or other) user for which you want to give that privilege.

Use the root ID (or sudo) to create a folder with the naming convention "${FullPath_to_DeviceRoot}.Trash-nnnn", then assign ownership privileges to that user by doing

chown username:groupname ${FullPath_to_DeviceRoot}.Trash-nnnn

After that, any drag-and-drop to Trash will be handled for that User as you expect it to be, with option to restore as for your base User.

1 Like
5

Thanks for the help. It all makes sense. When I changed the drive to "Mount at System Startup" the ownership of all the files changed to root.

But curiously, running chown reports all the ownerships being changed but root is still owner. I am almost sure that is because the drive is formatted NTFS. So now I am going to find an old external drive and format it as EXT to see if that works. I am not sure EXT will work as an removable drive. Any suggestions as to what format would be a better choice?

Bill

6

I would recommend formatting as any of EXT2/3/4. Unless the data is critical, you can limit to EXT3 (no journaling).

This is the definition I have in my /etc/fstab, in order to control the mounting and force user-initiated mounting, and not have the automounter do so using system default settings.

The first thing is to specify a mount point that is not under /mount, then create your own mount point for all such mounting, then define the settings in fstab for those to be used every time you mount.

For my external 4TB USB WD MyBook, I have the following for the first partition on that drive:

###############################################################################################################
#	EXTERNAL DEVICE
#

# /dev/sdc3    ext4     DB005_F1   11c8fbcc-c1e1-424d-9ffe-ad0ccf480128   100G          /site/DB005_F1 USB_EXTERNAL
UUID=????????-????-????-????-???????????? 	/site/DB005_F1 	ext4 	defaults,nofail,journal_checksum,journal_async_commit,commit=15,errors=remount-ro,journal_ioprio=2,data_err=ignore,nodiscard,noauto	0	0

Because I had issues with the USB interface, I also had to tweak my grub file, adding the "quirk" component as follows:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash scsi_mod.use_blk_mq=1 usb-storage.quirks=1058:25ee:u ipv6.disable=1"

Regarding the need for the quirk, I put together an article which was published in the "Full Circle Magazine - Issue 169", starting on p. 39, explaining

  • why it was needed, and
  • how I fixed the issue.
1 Like
7

Thanks. Looks like the limit is Linux does not support multiple users on windows file systems. EXT it is.

Bill

8

Hello @Bill,

Just "bumping" this to make sure you saw the edit I made, adding the reference to the article about the quirk, in case that is needed.