Why do my desktop folder links keep breaking whenever I turn off?

Question

I keep trying to make a link to my Windows account on the C: drive, however it keeps messing up everytime I reboot the system. It will say that the link is broken and to move to trash. This is how I would get the folder: /media/michael/OS/Users/Michael, then I would make a link to Michael and drag the link to the Desktop. Any ideas on how to get the link to stay?

Answer 1

Well your link most probably doesn't work because after rebooting your partition, on which you have your Windows installed, is unmounted. In Nautilus (the file browser) you simply need to click onto the partition and than it automatically mounts it for you (I suppose you did this when making the shortcut).

If your partition is not mounted, the shortcut will not work. That means, you would need to click on your partition in Nautilus first (to mount it) and will than be able to follow your shortcut.

Answer 2

I agree with @Dominik that the problem most probably is that the windows partition is not set to automount at boot.

To do that you need to modify your fstab file.

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) anf type sudo blkid
2. Identify your drive and copy the UUID of the windows partition.
3. Create the OS folder in /media/michael.
4. Press Alt + F2 and type gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
5. Add a line at the end like this UUID={your UUID here} /media/michael/OS ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=027,fmask=137 0 0
6. Save the file and reboot. Your partition will mount at boot and shortcuts should "stick".

Answer 3

This is because Ubuntu by default doesn't automatically mount partitions on local disk. You can config /etc/fstab to auto mount the disk to a static mount point in /media and keep the link alive on every boot.

I assume your /media/michael is a NTFS partition. Run mount and see which device currently holds this partition. For example:

/dev/sda3 on /media/michael type fuseblk [...]

Unmount the disk in Nautilus. Create the folder /media/michael (because it's created automatically whenever you hand-mount the partition in Nautilus).

sudo mkdir /media/michael

Then edit /etc/fstab with your favorite text editor (nano if you're not sure) and add a new line like this:

/dev/sda3 /media/michael ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

Run sudo mount -a then you're done.