Thanks to Swerdna’s excellent information I’ve been able to properly mount my ntfs formatted USB drive with user RW privileges.
The only thing I can’t figure out/find anywhere is how to make the drive mount to a specific mountpoint such as “ntfs-usb” instead of “disk” or “disk-1”, etc.
I used Expert Partitioner thru YaST and selected “do not mount partition” under Mounting Options and used the info on Swerdna’s site to get where I am now.
My system lists the drive as “/dev/sdd” and it’s (only) partition as “/dev/sdd1” and currently mounts it at /media/disk.
Thanks, rusty
If it’s a usb drive, just leave it as it is, mounting in /media
Thanks. I currently have my music manager pointed at it for it’s collection/library. I just didn’t want the mountpoint to change from /media/disk to something like /media/disk-1 if I plugged another drive in sometime. One day I’ll reformat it to ext4 and copy everything back over.
What helps is if the disk has a volume label
My external usb is a WD Elements and shows up as ‘ELEMENTS’
You can set Volume labels in Yast Partitioner I think, though I might have set mine in either windows or with Parted Magic.
I’ll try setting a label through YaST then, I might have to resurrect xP long enough to do that.
You can also do this via CLI:
fdisk -l (to get list of device partitions)
You may need to unmount (if mounted) the external storage device first. Then label like this (assuming /dev/sdb1):
ntfslabel /dev/sdb1 storage
Next time this ntfs volume is mounted, it will be mounted as /media/storage.
I don’t see where to set a volume label through YaST.:\
No I don’t
It’s because you have to select the radio to set a mount point and then I think the fstab options. I wouldn’t do that with an external
Try Parted Magic. But I am not sure if it requires a format to set the label. I don’t think so.
deano_ferrari’s advice warrants a good look before you do the more convoluted yast method
I’m not sure if this is a preferred method or not, but I took some steps from here (at the bottom, “Optional: setting more options with Hal.”
I created a file, /etc/hal/fdi/policy/15-static-mount.fdi, which contains :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="volume.uuid" string="7E7C4AC67C4A7943">
<merge key="volume.policy.should_mount" type="bool">true</merge>
<merge key="volume.fstype" type="string">ntfs</merge>
<strong><merge key="volume.policy.desired_mount_point" type="string">usb-ntfs</merge></strong>
<merge key="volume.label" type="string">usb-ntfs</merge>
<merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.noatime" type="bool">true</merge>
<merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.acl" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>
I used the uuid of my usb drive.
After a reboot the drive mounts to /media/usb-ntfs when I click on it in Dolphin. I didn’t use YaST so that radio button is still ticked to “not mount” it.
Please let me know if this isn’t normally considered an acceptable method as I am learning and don’t want to pass on bad info to others.
Thanks
Another means to the same end 
Good work
Thanks, deano_ferrari, for the info. For some reason wasn’t able to see your first post before. I’m trying your method with a SansaFuze music player (supports mp3,ogg,and FLAC!) and its uSD card which are formatted as FAT. As is, when I plug the Fuze in with the uSD card inserted they each show up as Volume (vfat) in my Places pane.
Thanks
I didn’t see your earlier post on the [much faser] CLI method, deano_ferrari. I’ll keep that in mind for next time and thanks for it. I just read a post you made pertaining to labeling FAT partitions. That will hopefully solve the rest of my problem. My SansaFuze and it’s uSD card simultaneously show up as Volume (vfat) in my Places pane on Dolphin when plugged in.