Auto-mounting Drives at Boot

Secondary drives — an NTFS Windows partition, a shared data disk — don't mount themselves on every boot unless /etc/fstab tells the kernel to do it. This walks through adding fstab entries safely, with the flags that matter for NTFS specifically.

Warning

editing /etc/fstab incorrectly can prevent the system from booting. Back it up first:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

Find the Partition's Uuid and Filesystem Type

sudo blkid

This prints each partition's UUID (e.g. 7C9EBC0D9EBBBE48) and TYPE (e.g. ntfs, ext4, exfat) — both needed for the fstab entry.

Edit /etc/fstab

sudo nvim /etc/fstab

Add the Mount Entry

General syntax:

UUID=<uuid> <mount_point> <filesystem_type> <options> <dump> <pass>

For NTFS partitions specifically, these options avoid the usual permission headaches:

# Mount Local_Disk
UUID=7C9EBC0D9EBBBE48 /media/abdallah-shehawey/Local_Disk ntfs-3g defaults,nofail,x-gvfs-show,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0022 0 0

# Mount WinOS
UUID=01DC06CA66C0E3F0 /media/abdallah-shehawey/WinOS ntfs-3g defaults,nofail,x-gvfs-show,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0022 0 0

Make sure the mount point directories exist first:

sudo mkdir -p /media/abdallah-shehawey/Local_Disk

What each option does:

• defaults — the standard mount options.
• nofail — critical for external/secondary drives: if the drive is missing or unreadable, the system still boots instead of hanging waiting for it.
• x-gvfs-show — makes the drive show up in a file manager's sidebar (Nautilus, etc.).
• uid=1000,gid=1000 — makes the primary user the owner of the files, so reads/writes don't need root.
• umask=0022 — the default permission mask for new files on the mount.

Verify Before Rebooting

Don't reboot yet — a typo in fstab can otherwise leave the system stuck at boot. Instead, mount everything fstab defines and check for errors:

sudo mount -a

No errors means the entries are correct, and the drives will mount automatically on every subsequent boot.