Secondary storage drive not appearing in file manager

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

Which Linux distro are you using? Fedora 44

Which release version?
Fedora 44

Which kernel are you using?

Linux 7.0.12-201.fc44.x86_64

Which BIOS version are you using?

03.06

Which Framework Laptop 16 model are you using? (Was AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series, but switched mainboard to intel AI 300 series)

I recently installed an SSD into the secondary SSD slot but whenever I boot my computer it won’t appear on the file manager. However, when I check the BIOS it does seem to acknowledge its existence. What do I do?

Thank you in advance!

2

Does it show up in the partition manager (I think it might be called “Disks” in GNOME)? You may need to partition and format the drive first, especially if it wasn’t already installed when you installed Fedora

1 Like
3

Oh! Turns out I hadn’t partitioned the disk. Doing so allowed it to be mounted.

Thanks!

4

Ok now the issue has changed, my computer’s file manager recgonizes it, it just won’t let me write to the disk.

5

it also needs admin permissions to mount every single time

6

That’s got to be file permissions…

I would try a chown -R your_username and/or a chmod 777 -R /the/mounted/dir

But you could check the output of mount to be sure that the filesystem is mounted rw (read-write) and not ro (read-only)

7

doing the chmod trick seemed to do it. The only issue left is it keeps asking for my admin password to mount the drive every time I reboot. Is there a way to fix that, or has this done it?

8

Did you set up luks encryption or something when you formatted it? That’s the only thing I’ve ever done that required a password at mount (but is a separate passphrase iirc…)

9

I don’t think so? I just formatted the drive with KDE’s drive manager

10

Huh. Not sure why it would ask for a password then…

Is it in /etc/fstab? Maybe some other mechanism is mounting it that requires a password?

11

how would I check /etc/fstab?

12

Ok I found it, Here’s what it says:

/etc/fstab

Created by anaconda on Tue May 5 20:44:46 2026

Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under ‘/dev/disk/’.

See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info.

After editing this file, run ‘systemctl daemon-reload’ to update systemd

units generated from this file.

UUID=a6c3b56a-3d2b-4cec-9f20-deab5af162bd / btrfs subvol=root,compress=zstd:1 0 0
UUID=9883ebcc-8ea8-4169-8bd1-8492f391caff /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
UUID=6344-7EFF /boot/efi vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 2
UUID=a6c3b56a-3d2b-4cec-9f20-deab5af162bd /home btrfs subvol=home,compress=zstd:1 0 0

13

cat /etc/fstab

14

Generally you need a line in this file to mount a filesystem at boot.

I guess none of those lines are your new filesystem, so you should add a line for it. Then it should mount at boot without asking for a password (but I’m still not sure what would mount it with a password :sweat_smile:)

I would’ve expected it to just not mount, and then you could click it in Dolphin or something to mount it. My Windows drive is like that. For data I use zfs so there is a different process but it doesn’t ask for a password

15

Honestly I don’t know enough to tell if these are my new drives or not. I’m assuming one of them has to be before it’s showing 4 partitions and I only have 4 partitions including the new drive

16

Well, you’ve got filesystems mount at /, /home, /boot and /boot/efi

All those paths have to exist on your first boot, so these entries were all created by the Fedora installer, so they can’t be your new drive

To create an entry for your new filesystem, you’ll need the UUID and filesystem type, as well as a directory that you want to mount it at. Then you add a line /etc/fstab

17

Ok, how would I find those?

18

Your root and home mounts have the same uuid, so they must be a single partition. That’s why there’s one more than you expect.

btrfs has subvolumes so you can do stuff like snapshot everything except your home directory before a system update

19

You can use lsblk to get the information you need. You’ll have to specify what columns you want with the -o option like lsblk -o PATH,FSTYPE,UUID (there is a help option that shows all the possible columns. I’m just doing this from memory so I might not have the names right)

The directory is one you will create yourself with mkdir

20

Ok I think I’m missing something, I use lsblk to get what exactly? The address of the drive? Which I think is nvme1n1p1.

From there what do I do to get it to auto-mount without needing admin perms each time?