Mount and Share an external disk drive in Linux Ubuntu

Replace /dev/sdX1 with your device (e.g., /dev/sdb1).

1. Plug in the disk.

   • Just connect the drive via USB. Linux will expose it as a block device under /dev (e.g., /dev/sdb). “Block” means data is read/written in fixed‑size blocks.

2. Run the following command to see the disks & filesystems.

sudo lsblk -f

3. Run the following command to create a mount point.

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/external

4. You can also add support for NTFS and exFAT by running the following commands

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y ntfs-3g exfat-fuse exfatprogs

5. Now, let's mount the disk to the mounting point that we created in step 3

   • If your partition is in ext4 format:

sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/external

• If your partition is in ntfs format:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g) /dev/sdX1 /mnt/external

• If your partition is in exfat format:

udo mount -t exfat -o uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g) /dev/sdX1 /mnt/external

6. Verify the mount with diskfree command

df -h | grep /mnt/external

7. Now we need to auto-mount the external disks so we don't have to mount the disk every time. In order to do that, let's get the UUID first with the following command

sudo blkid /dev/sdX1 

8. Open the /etc/fstab with Nano and add a line at the bottom, replace the UUID we got from step 7

sudo nano /etc/fstab

• If your partition is in ext4 format:

UUID=YOUR-UUID /mnt/external ext4 defaults 0 2

• If your partition is in ntfs format:

UUID=YOUR-UUID /mnt/external ntfs-3g defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=022 0 0

• If your partition is in exfat format:

UUID=YOUR-UUID /mnt/external exfat defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=022 0 0

9. Let's mount all filesystems mentioned in fstab to ensure our configuration is correct. You should see no error after running the following command.

sudo mount -a

Share the Disk over the Network (Samba)

1. We need to install Samba first. Samba implements Microsoft’s SMB/CIFS protocol

sudo apt install -y samba

2. Ensure you own the mount path

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /mnt/external

3. Create a share

sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.bak

printf "\n[external]\n path = /mnt/external\n browseable = yes\n read only = no\n create mask = 0644\n directory mask = 0755\n" | sudo tee -a /etc/samba/smb.conf

4. Add a Samba password for your user

sudo smbpasswd -a $USER

5. Restart service & open firewall

sudo systemctl restart smbd

sudo ufw allow 'Samba' # if UFW is enabled