Mounting a safely removed external disk

Question

If I unmount a drive in Ubuntu how could I mount it again without physically reconnecting the drive?

I'm using Ubuntu 11.04

Answer 1

This question was answered in a comment

When you safely remove the drive, you don't merely unmount it, you close the usb connection with the device. Hence, there is no usb connection left with the device to initiate a new mount. By physically replugging the cable, you establish a new connection, and it can thus be mounted once again.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure that Egil answered your question. So now that you know the behavior of clicking the "eject" button on the Desktop, lets try some command line alternatives.

One way it is possible to unmount the device without closing the USB connection is to:

• Open a terminal by pressing "Ctrl-Alt-T" or Searching for Terminal in the Dash

• Type the command

     #mount
  

This will display a list of devices that are currently mounted on your local system, as well as show their assigned mount points. (I've spaced the output below to make it easy to read)

$ mount

/dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)

proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)

none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)

none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)

udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)

devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) /dev/sdb1 on /media/1BD8-1707 type vfat (rw,nodev,nosuid,uuid=1000,gid=1000)

Your USB device will most likely be at the bottom of the list, in our case it's /dev/sdb1 and mounted to /media/1BD8-1707.

Usually all USB devices are mounted to /media/XXXX

To unmount the USB device simply type

     #sudo umount /media/1BD8-1707

This will unmount the disk then you can simply mount it back up by either

A: Clicking the USB icon in your Unity Taskbar or B: You can remount it wherever you please, in a different directory. See below

     #sudo mkdir /usbdrive
     #sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /usbdrive

Thats it, you should now be able to access your usb device by navigating to /usbdrive

Answer 3

Try going: Places Menu -> Computer

Then you should see the disk. Double-clicking on it should mount it for you.