How to Mount FAT32 and NTFS Drives on a Linux Server (Step‑by‑Step Guide)

Preface

Usually the portable hard drives or USB flash drives we use are formatted with NTFS or FAT32 file systems. Most Linux distributions support FAT32, so they can be mounted directly. However, Linux does not support mounting NTFS devices directly; the ntfs-3g package must be installed.

Today we will learn how to mount FAT32 and NTFS devices on a server.

1. Steps to Mount FAT32 USB Drive (External Hard Disk) on a Linux Server

1) Insert the USB drive into a USB port and ensure it is properly connected.

2) Identify the device, e.g., /dev/sdb1.

# fdisk -l | grep FAT32
/dev/sdb1 * 56 640 3580928 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

3) Create a mount point, e.g., /fat32. # mkdir /fat32 4) Mount the USB drive.

# mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /fat32
# (After mounting successfully, the contents of the USB drive can be accessed under /fat32)

Unmount the USB drive

# umount /fat32
# rm -rf /fat32

2. Steps to Mount NTFS External Hard Disk on a Linux Server

1) Install ntfs-3g

ntfs-3g can be installed via yum or by compiling from source.

Choose the method you prefer.

yum method: # yum -y install ntfs-3g Source package method:

# wget https://tuxera.com/opensource/ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2017.3.23.tgz
# yum -y install gcc
# tar -zxvf ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2017.3.23.tgz
# cd ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2017.3.23/
# ./configure && make && make install

2) Identify the device, e.g., /dev/sdc1.

# fdisk -l | grep NTFS
/dev/sdc1 * 1 244 1955776+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

3) Create a mount point and mount.

# mkdir /ntfs
# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /ntfs

Unmount the external hard disk

# umount /ntfs
# rm -rf /ntfs

3. Common mount examples

mount /dev/sr0 /mnt – mount CD/DVD to /mnt

mount /dev/sdb1 /data – mount sdb1 partition to /data

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /fat32 – mount USB drive to /fat32

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /ntfs – mount NTFS external hard disk to /ntfs

mount -t iso9660 -o loop centos8.iso /mnt – mount ISO image to /mnt

mount -t nfs 192.168.1.251:/data /mnt – mount remote NFS share to /mnt

mount -o remount,rw / – remount root partition as read‑write in single‑user mode

For more information, see mount --help or the manual page man mount.