Member Avatar for toomutch

Hi,
I have a hotswap sata drive that I use for backups on a PC running Ubuntu 12.04LTS. When I insert the drive it shows correctly on the desktop and I can double click the icon to show the contents of the device.
I want to write a script to copy certain files from the pc onto the removable drive, but I am having trouble mounting the hotswap drive as I never know what device id it will have allocated.
When I first insert the drive it allocates it as /dev/sdf1, but if I remove the drive and re-insert it, it allocates it as /dev/sdg1. How do I write the mount command (or copy command?) so I can find the drive id?
This is what I have:
sudo mount /dev/sdf1 /media/128GB_SSDcp /home/dfsql01/dumps/*.sql /media/128GB_SSD/SQL_Backups
`sudo umount /dev/sdf1

Many thanks,
Toomutch

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Dani AI

Generated

’s suggestion to use a filesystem label is the right direction — do not rely on transient names like /dev/sdf1. udev creates persistent symlinks under /dev/disk/by-label and /dev/disk/by-uuid that survive re-inserts; scripts should use those instead of /dev/sdX. (wiki.debian.org)

Because the drive is NTFS (noted by ), set a label with the NTFS tool (or in Windows) and then resolve the device by label or UUID in the script. Example workflow: set the label (run on the unmounted partition), verify the label/UUID with lsblk or blkid, then mount via the by-label link or findfs. Practical example script:

LABEL=128GB_SSD
MOUNT=/media/128GB_SSD

DEV=$(findfs LABEL=$LABEL)           # or: DEV=/dev/disk/by-label/$LABEL
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g "$DEV" "$MOUNT"
cp /home/dfsql01/dumps/*.sql "$MOUNT/SQL_Backups/"
sudo umount "$MOUNT"

Use ntfslabel to write the label and findfs or blkid to discover devices. These tools are the standard way to make mounts deterministic. (manpages.debian.org)

Additional notes: lsblk -f is handy to list LABEL/UUID and FSTYPE before mounting. If write access is required by a non-root account, prefer ntfs-3g and set uid=, gid=, umask= or a user-mapping file in the mount options. Ensure the NTFS volume is clean (Windows not hibernated / fast-startup off) before mounting read-write. Test the script manually first and keep labels/UUIDs unique if multiple removable drives are used. (man7.org)

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Member Avatar for rubberman

Give the file system on the drive a label. You can then find it with the e2label command.

Member Avatar for toomutch

Thanks for the idea rubberman. The drive is currently formatted NTFS as it also has to be accessed from a Windoze PC.

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