this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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How to auto remount external HDD after power loss to laptop server? (piefed.ca)
submitted 21 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by Lenna@piefed.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I'm running a Ubuntu server on my old laptop with an external HDD connected to it. The external HDD is powered independently from the laptop, as it is plugged into the wall.

During a power outage, my laptop remains operational due to its battery, but the HDD shuts down. When power is restored, my laptop does not automatically remount the HDD, and I have to reboot the system manually to access it.

Does anyone know how I can resolve this issue?

Edit: Not sure if this added context changes anything, but this is the HDD I'm using. It's a 3.5" HDD that gets its power directly from the wall.

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[–] Lenna@piefed.ca 2 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

auto-mounting system that only happens to run at boot

This is correct. I made my drive auto mount using /etc/fstab, and I believe that is only checked once during boot.

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You can run mount -a to mount all fstab entries. You could put that in a cronjob I guess

[–] Lenna@piefed.ca 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

If I were to make it run that command every 5 minutes, would there be any downsides?

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 14 hours ago

I don't know if it has side effects when there's issues with mounting or the like.

It would also interfere if you want to unmount it and forget to disable the cronjob.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Nah, that's good. What I mean is, if it's in /etc/fstab, it should be possible to manually mount it without a reboot. Have you tried manually remounting it after power comes back?

[–] Lenna@piefed.ca 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Nope, I haven't tried that. But I will give it a try when the next power outage occurs. I actually didn't know I could manually remount until today. I'm still pretty new to selfhosting.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 16 hours ago

Gotcha. Yeah, the stuff in fstab is just a convenience; it's equivalent to running a bunch of mount commands at boot. You might be able to just run "mount" again without the '-o remount" option. I was just listing that in case you were seeing some kind of errors in trying to manually mount it.