Mounting external hard disk for all users at start up in ubuntu 14.04

To mount a partition at startup for all users, we need an entry in the fstab file. What is happening presently is, the HDD is getting mounted for the user who logs in which gives access permissions to only that user. By adding an entry in the fstab, the partition will be mounted by root with access to all users. this r/w access can be controlled later on.

sudo blkid lists down all partitions available on your system. Note down the UUID of the NTFS partition that you want to mount at boot. In your case, it seems 00148BDE148BD4D6

now create a folder, for example sudo mkdir /media/ExtHDD01. This is the folder where your external HDD partition will be mounted at. This folder will be owned by root. To give other users permission to r/w into this folder we need to give the proper permissions. so chmod -R 777 /media/ExtHDD01 would be good enough. Now you need to edit your fstab file. to do so, type the following command.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

go to the bottom of the file and add the following line there.

UUID=00148BDE148BD4D6 /media/ExtHDD01/    ntfs-3g        auto,user,rw 0 0

Reboot system and you should be good to go. You can follow the same procedure for any number of HDDs.


GUI method

  1. plug in the drive.

  2. Go to Disks in the desktop finder (or sudo gnome-disks on a terminal)

  3. Select the correct disk in the left column.

  4. Click the gear icon enter image description here

  5. Select edit mount options

  6. Turn off

  7. Check both mount at startup and show user interface

Thats it!


I recently was in the same situation and I figured out a solution.

I have 2 users, ADMIN and DESKTOP USER for which I wanted to mount same drive labeled STORAGE upon their respective logins, so:

In the file /etc/fstab I had to add following entry:

LABEL=STORAGE /media/$USER/STORAGE auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

The notable thing is the use of the environment variable $USER.

This is for Ubuntu 16.04 where new drive is mounted under /media/<username>/<drive-label>

You may also use UUID instead of <drive-label>.