External USB SSD disk fails to mount at boot

Question

I have two external drives attached to my Ubuntu Server 22.04.3. My /etc/fstab includes, among other things, the following two lines for the two drives:

/dev/disk/by-uuid/d7dbea69-0332-4d12-b905-b9a116e28422 /sandisk ext4 auto,nofail 0 2
/dev/disk/by-uuid/06b24834-a749-4d93-b0d5-a6da71eaf224 /verbatim ext4 auto,nofail 0 2

/verbatim is an independently powered magnetic disk also attached via USB. It gets detected and mounted on boot just fine. /sandisk is the problem. This is a USB SSD drive with no power. I can mount it fine after boot with mount -a but the system always boots with it not mounted. Is there any way I can have it mounted at boot?

Perhaps the SSD isn't ready and needs a delay. Try a systemd.mount + a systemd.timer — Daniel T, Feb 10 '24 at 13:30
Although not a network device but, how to setup ubuntu that fstab runs after network is connected? might help delay the system trying to mount that until it's ready with power. — Raffa, Feb 10 '24 at 14:39
Another boot parameter that may help? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/fstab#Automount_with_systemd or you can use autofs https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Autofs use autofs for any storage that isn't connected directly to the system with SAS, SATA, eSATA, or Infiniband connections — oldfred, Feb 10 '24 at 15:08

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 11 '24 at 11:52

My kernel ring buffer contained all the information I needed.

$ sudo dmesg
...
[    2.770637] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0781, idProduct=55af, bcdDevice=40.55
[    2.770642] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[    2.770645] usb 2-1: Product: Extreme Pro 55AF
[    2.770646] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: SanDisk
[    2.770648] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 323332314230343031393737
...
[   60.108257] EXT4-fs (sdb): warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended
[   60.125838] EXT4-fs (sdb): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null). Quota mode: none.

So it was being detected during boot! A simple sudo e2fsck -y /dev/sdb fixed the problem.

External USB SSD disk fails to mount at boot

1 Answers1