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The file for default mount points to be loaded at system startup is located in /etc/fstab for many Linux distributions.Īs operating system distributions become more streamlined and user-friendly, the need for users to manually mount and unmount devices has diminished. To make the data more convenient to use, you then create an additional mount point with the command mount /dev/sdc1 /home/john/files to put the data in the home directory. You then execute the command mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb to mount the file system on the USB drive to the mount point location /mnt/usb.
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The system detects the hardware device and puts it into the file system at /dev/sdc1. The /mnt directory and subdirectories are intended for mount points to removable or temporary files storage.Īs an example of using mount points, consider plugging a USB flash drive into a Linux computer. From there, an additional link to the removable media is made in the /mnt (mount) directory. Linux has two default mount point locations for removable media: /dev (device) is where all physical devices are first mounted. If any files are already in that folder and it is then made into a mount point for another file system, the existing data will be no longer available, but it won't be deleted. The mount point location is typically an empty folder.
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The mount command is used to make a device or file system accessible to the system, and then to connect its root directory to a mount point on the local file system.
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This way, all the data needed on the system can be accessed from the root directory. By using a mount point, data stored on different physical and logical volumes can be put on the same file system. Mount points are fundamental to the operation of most Portable Operating System Interface-compatible operating systems, such as Unix, Linux and macOS. Windows can use mount points, but it is not common. Mount points are fundamental to Unix, Linux and macOS. Mount points are used to make the data on a different physical storage drive easily available in a folder structure. A mount point is a directory on a file system that is logically linked to another file system.
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