I’m facing a problem in which I’m unable to mount an external HDD (4TB) formatted in exFat. This HDD was working in two of my machines before. When I plug it in, the message “Mount and open” appears. I click on the button and it keep loading for one minute or so before stopping. If I try to mount it from Dolphin, same result.
When it stops trying to mount the disk, the USB icon in the taskbar where you can see external devices and mount/remove them shows “You don’t have permission to use this device” (the message could be different, English is not my first language and my system is in Spanish).
If I unplug the HDD, it asks for my password to mount it as if the device is still plugged in.
I’m posting this here because I use KDE Plasma in both of the computers that are unable to mount the HDD. The other computer has Windows installed on it and there I can use the HDD without issues.
My OSs are Fedora 42 (updated today and the problem persists) and the other one is Endeavour OS (updated today too).
KDE Plasma is the common element, so I figured out it may have something to do with this problem.
Other devices like pendrives are able to be mounted, but not this HDD. I don’t know if disk size has anything to do with this behavior.
I saw this post with a similar problem, but restarting udisks2 didn’t work for me.
KDE Partition Manager detects the HDD.
If there is any other information that I could add to help locate this problem, just let met know.
I wonder if it is KDE. This is what I got as answer when writing your problem to an AI system. Yes, I know, not everything (to say it mildly) AI spits out is true.
ExFAT 4TB Disk Mount Linux
A 4TB disk formatted as exFAT may fail to mount on Linux due to several potential issues, primarily related to partition table type and filesystem support.
The most common cause is the partition table type. Disks formatted on Windows or macOS often use a GPT (GUID Partition Table) partition scheme. While Linux can read GPT, the exfat-fuse implementation may struggle with certain GPT configurations, especially if the disk has a hybrid MBR (Master Boot Record) setup or if the GPT is marked as invalid by Linux tools like gdisk.
This can result in the system failing to detect the disk as mountable, even though it works on Windows and macOS.
In some cases, the disk's partition table might be incorrectly interpreted due to a mismatch between the drive's physical sector size (e.g., 4KB native) and the logical sector size expected by Linux tools, leading to incorrect partition size reporting.
To resolve this, ensure that the necessary Linux packages for exFAT support are installed. For Ubuntu and similar distributions, this typically involves installing exfat-fuse and exfat-utils packages using the command sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils.
This is required because exFAT support was not included by default in older Linux kernels.
If the partition table is the issue, you can attempt to fix it. Using gdisk to convert the partition table to GPT (even if it's already GPT) can sometimes resolve the problem, as the tool may correct inconsistencies.
After ensuring the partition table is valid, you can use parted to set the msftdata flag on the exFAT partition, which can improve compatibility with macOS and potentially resolve mounting issues on Linux.
It's crucial to back up data before making any changes to the partition table.
Finally, if the disk is not detected at all, it might be due to a hardware or enclosure issue, particularly if the drive is a 4KB native (4Kn) drive and the USB enclosure is not correctly handling the sector size translation.
In such cases, the partition table becomes invalid when the drive is accessed directly, leading to mounting failures.
Try it by getting some real information that will help with diagnosing the problem. Open the Konsole program then with the disk plugged in use sudo fdisk -l to see the drive to get its device name. You should see something like this.
Disk /dev/sdb: 14.55 TiB, 16000867106816 bytes, 31251693568 sectors Disk model: Elements 25A3 Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier: 1D0CF95A-68BF-4EA2-9C92-FBA2A42FA244 Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sdb1 2048 411647 409600 200M EFI System /dev/sdb2 411648 84297727 83886080 40G Linux filesystem /dev/sdb3 84297728 252069887 167772160 80G Linux filesystem /dev/sdb4 252069888 31251691519 30999621632 14.4T Linux filesystem
There you see my external drive a WD Elements 16TB it has four partitions. Yours will have likely only one partition if mine did it would be the /dev/sdb1. Now in the Konsole once you determine your use sudo mkdir /tmp/external to make a mount point to mount the drive and see if it reports problems.
Once the mount point is created then sudo chown username:username /tmp/external to grant your normal username the control of it. Now to mount the drive sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /tmp/external this should mount the drive allowing access to your normal user in any of the graphical programs at the /tmp/external mount point as shown in their interfaces.
If it does not mount then an error will be shown to you after you attempt to do it. This is the useful information you need to diagnose the problem. Post it here if you need further assistance from us.
Now I look at the useless formatting options it appears they will not properly show a multiline option with either the blockquote or code option like any other forum software will do. Hopefully seeing the output in Konsole will give you the idea of the needed device name.
You are welcome. Does indeed seem strange mine will mount either way I choose to do it. Your live usb with different desktop seem reasonable idea to try.
Edit: Forgot to ask, can you navigate the disk graphically when you mount from terminal?