It is fairly easy. Most Linux distributions auto mount usb drives. However, if you are like me, you may have a Linux system that has just the barebones for the purpose you have in mind. For example, I have a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) server as a photo webserver. When I plug in my drive, it doesn’t pop up on a desktop: there is no Windows-like desktop!

Fortunately it only takes me few commands to get in business:

1. If your drive is NTFS formatted (like mine is), you may need to update your system:

sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

2. Find the drive device ID:

fdisk -l /dev/sd*

3. Mount the drive.

sudo mkdir /media/usbsudo mount -w -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /media/usb

(where /dev/sdc1 is the device found with the previous command, and ntfs-3g is for NT File System, but you may use something different like vfat or ext3).

That is it! It is mounted and ready to use.