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Asked: 2018-11-23 07:26:32 +0800 CST

Why do NTFS partitions have to be mounted separately on media folder?

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On a dual boot system with Windows and Ubuntu 16.04, the NTFS partitions on disk are shown with their label names when viewed in Ubuntu. A user has to click on it in Nautilus to mount it.

  1. Why is the additional mounting step required at all? Is it some safety feature for some reason? If Ubuntu can 'see' an NTFS partition which has not been left in a Hibernation state by Windows, why can't Ubuntu just mount it automatically?
  2. Why mount it on /media instead of /mnt? Is this part of any 'safety feature of some kind' as mentioned in the above question?
partitioning mount ntfs 16.04

2 Answers

    • Not only NTFS but other partitions such as ext4 are also mounted on /media

    • /media and /mnt are used according to Filesystem Hierarchy Standards here and here. That means /media is used by system and /mnt is for user.

    • Not mounting partitions at startup is the default but you can change it by editing /etc/fstab or the GUI gnome-disks.

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  2. Best Answer

    Why mount it on /media instead of /mnt? Is this part of any 'safety feature of some kind' as mentioned in the above question?

    All external devices are mounted in /media/. /mnt used to be used for fixed disks but we generally now create a mountpoint in /.

    Why is the additional mounting step required at all? Is it some safety feature for some reason? If Ubuntu can 'see' an NTFS partition which has not been left in a Hibernation state by Windows, why can't Ubuntu just mount it automatically?

    Yes, it is a safety measure. Or was at least. There would not be lots of issues to auto mount NTFS nowadays. Mounting NTFS tends to break due to hibernation and filesystem errors but the driver is capable of working around those by auto mounting as read only.

    why can't Ubuntu just mount it automatically?

    Up to now it has been up to the individual user to set that up. /etc/fstab is the place to add it. See for instance

    How to automount NTFS partitions?

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