r/linux4noobs • u/mind_your_s • 2d ago
storage External hard drives not mounting properly/being seen
I don't know what's going on. Followed the standard tutorial for formatting drives and automounting for bazzite, but EXT4 just would not work, so we switched to BTRFS for the two external drives we have. At first things seemed to be working, but now every time we boot up the system, not only do the drives mount to a completely different location but one drive won't be seen by the disk app at all despite both being plugged in and the computer will say "could not mount this device". Using the computer's auto solution "mount and open" does nothing.
Unplugging and replugging the unseen/unmounted external drive seldom helps, typically just changing what drive the computer sees and mounts. It never sees both at the same time. Even when the drives are being recognized, things can't be properly downloaded to them. Movies and tv shows have errors in jellyfin because the drive isn't being registered properly and steam games throw up error codes and won't finish downloading if told to download directly to the drive.
We tried mounting through gnome-disks and remounting manually but both have resulted in the less than functioning results I've explained. I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue (both hard drives work fine with other computers, and the mini pc I bought is brand new and runs fine) or something else. I've also tried running code to fix any broken bits like the journal, but even after the code the issues will not resolve.
I'm really at my wits end. Please someone help 🙏. Neither me nor my brother who is helping me are well versed in Linux at all and I really want it to work, but I can't find anything that seems to fix the problem.
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u/SOVNetwork_Dev 2d ago
The "only ever sees one drive at a time" part makes me think this is power or the USB enclosures, not the file system.
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Are both drives powered from the mini PC's USB ports? Two bus powered drives can pull more than the ports give, and then one drops off or never shows up. Try a powered USB hub, or drives with their own power supply.
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Cheap enclosures sometimes report the same serial number, and Linux gets confused when two are plugged in at once. Run lsblk -f with both connected and see if both actually show up with their own UUIDs.
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Plug one in while sudo dmesg -w is running in a terminal. If you see lines about resets, disconnects or over current, it's hardware or power.
The mount point moving around is normal for drives that just get automounted, because they land under /run/media/yourname/ with whatever label they have. To fix that, mount them by UUID in /etc/fstab to a fixed folder. On Bazzite use /var/mnt/ (for example /var/mnt/media), and add nofail to the options so the system still boots if a drive is unplugged. Then point Jellyfin and Steam at those fixed paths. Steam and Jellyfin both get upset when the path changes between boots, which explains a lot of the errors you saw.
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u/mind_your_s 2d ago
Holy shit thank you, I think that's probably the problem. The drives are 128 TB each and power from the computer, not externally. And they were pretty cheap considering how much storage has been going for lately. I got two for $80.
If they do report the same serial number, is there any way to fix that?
I'll also try the tests you mentioned and see if one or both is the issue
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u/mind_your_s 2d ago edited 2d ago
Okay so the sudo command threw up a bunch of errors and will not finish. It's been at least 20 minutes. The last two lines before it says the drive is attached, which is where it stalls out, are the following: "very big device, trying to use READ CAPACITY(16)" and "alternate gpt is invalid, using primary gpt"
The drives do have their own UUIDs
And when I try to mount to a fixed folder using /etc/fstab it says permission denied
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u/SOVNetwork_Dev 1d ago
Sorry to be the one to say it, but two 128 TB drives for $80 are almost certainly fake. Real 128 TB drives don't exist at that price. The biggest consumer hard drives are around 30 TB and cost hundreds. These are usually a small cheap drive or SD card inside, with the firmware lying about its size.
That fits everything you're seeing. The "very big device" and "alternate GPT is invalid" lines are the kernel reading a size the drive can't really hold, which is why it stalls. Anything written past the real capacity gets lost or overwrites earlier files, so Jellyfin and Steam see corrupt data.
You can confirm it with f3. On Bazzite install it in a rootful distrobox (distrobox create --root), then run sudo f3probe --destructive --time-ops /dev/sdX (the right letter from lsblk). It wipes the drive and tells you the real size. On Windows, ValiDrive or H2testw do the same.
I'd ask for a refund and not put anything you care about on them. f3fix can shrink them to their real size, but they're usually slow and unreliable even then. The permission denied in fstab is a side issue you can ignore for now.
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u/doc_willis 2d ago
All i can offer is that I have several Ext4 drives, that all seem to automount fine for me when the system boots up. I had /etc/fstab entries for them, and i set the owner of the filesystems to be my main user after they mounted the first time.
I am on The Bazzite Deck Image using KDE Plasma, on a desktop system.
Exactly what fstab entries are made for your drives?
Example of one of mine, but its about as basic as it gets.
LABEL="1TB_M.2" /home/bob/Drives/1TB_M.2 ext4 defaults 0 2
I have numerous other external USB HDD's (ext4) that also all mount fine via the KDE file manager (they get mounted on first access)
Again, after the first mount, I did set the ownership to be owned by my UID 1000 user. (the first user) on my system.
Some services may run as their own user, and not be able to access those drives.
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u/MintAlone 2d ago
Post the output from
cat /etc/fstab.