How to mount filesystem at boot when filesystem exist

Question

I have Linux mint 13 maya installed on USB Pendrive (my portable linux). I run it on different computers. Is there a way to set the fstab to auto mount the hard drive from X computer at boot?

So far i have this fstab

proc    /proc   proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0   0
tmpfs                  /tmp          tmpfs     nodev,nosuid          0      0
UUID="3f4f873f-3429-49ec-aa92-c0b32f22b057" none    swap    sw  0   0
/dev/sdb1   /   ext4    noatime,relatime,errors=remount-ro  0   1
#/dev/sda2  /media/win7 defaults,nofail,user,noauto 0   0

I would like Mint would be able to mount partition /dev/sda2 on my laptop. When the partition doesn't exist at boot the system prompts what to do. I would like the system to ignore the mount when the partition is not present.

Is there some way to archieve it?

Answer 1

You have an error on your mount line.

/dev/sda2 /media/win7 defaults,nofail,user,noauto 0 0

You're missing the filesystem type. It should read:

/dev/sda2 /media/win7 ntfs-3g defaults,nofail,user,noauto 0 0

Assuming you have the ntfs-3g software installed on your pendrive.

If you haven't got ntfs-3g install it with:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

You may want to also look through this link from the ubuntu forums on safe read/write for ntfs volumes.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009

Mind you, this also assumes that the drive will always be at /dev/sda2 and that the drive is formatted as ntfs. It may not be. But at least this should work for your laptop and a some computers. If I'm not mistaken win7 also has a tiny partition at the beginning of the drive used for the boot loader so the C drive may even be at /dev/sda5.