*: I am not a newbie, but I had a stroke in 2011 and am now brain-damaged
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I have a newish computer that hates me, I have set it up with

3 "permanent" drives, (1 2TB SSD, and 2 3TB HDD)
1 external cd/dvd player,
1 external backup drive (1 8TB HDD)

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The problem is with the 8 TB HDD. In theory I would only turn it on to make a daily backup. It did work initially, as planned, but I had trouble getting the computer boot/reboot, so I started messing with my /etc/fstab file.

It works BUT I no longer have access to my 8 TB HDD.

The SSD device is
/dev/nve0n1p1 (UEFI)
, /dev/nve0n1p2 (main)
, and /dev/nve0n1p3 (swap)

The HDD are /dev/sda1 (My Real Home Directory and Music)
, /dev/sdb1 (Movies and Old {Rectum} TV Shows (don't ask))
, and /dev/sdc1 (Backup).

/dev/sdc1 has no UUID, my drives are currently about 25% - 30% full.

How do I get me a UUID for /dev/sdc1, and how EXACTLY set up that line in the /etc/fstab for the {bad word} to work.

the problem line in my current /etc/fstab file is:

/dev/sdc1 /home/PUBLIC/BU-1 ext4 defaults,users,noauto,exec,rw 0 2

Do you have any suggestions how I can "fix" this problem?

{{The CD/DVD drive works perfectly (for now)}}

===

Thank you for your time, and have an excellent day!

All filesystems have an UUID or an ID of some sort. To find the UUIDs you can look at the output of the command

You can easily change the /etc/fstab by replacing the UUID with the device ID like.

UUIDs should be unique so do not use what is posted above.

You don't actually need a uuid to put a disk into fstab. You can use the device name, in your case /dev/sdc1.

But if you want to know the UUID of it, just do a long listing (ls -l) of /dev/disk/by-uuid.

You can also use
to find out the UUID of a disk or partition, including some more information.

You do not need the UUID to mount a device. But let's say your 8TB drive is referenced as /dev/sdc1 in fstab. Then, let's say you add another drive, and Linux maps sdc to the new drive instead of your 8TB drive. So now your drives are mixed up. But if you instead mount the drive by UUID, your mounts will be stable.

The blkid and the sudo blkid does NOT show show my /dev/sdc1

And, yes it is plugged into a USB port.

And, for some odd reason, after I recreated the mount point, it now points as /dev/usb1.

Yes... I am going crazy.

Question, I am "sort of" sure that the problem is that:

1: The computer hates me, and
2: the problem has something to do with my /etc/fstab entry for /dev/sdc1.

But I don't know, because I am asking y'all.

{since I lived Tennessee for three years, I am allowed to use the word "y'all" without feeling embarrassed}

Thank you for you help, and have a glorious day!

lsblk -f and look in /dev/disk/by-uuid are alternatives to blkid.

Also look at the output of dmesg command after you plug in the drive to see if it is recognized correctly. I have not seen a USB drive associated with /dev/usb1 before.

After a search I found that blkid is part of the util-linux package. I do not know if it is installed by default (if you are using Debian from your info). This is the link: https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/util-linux
You most likely know how to check your packages; I usually use "apt policy <package>"

As far as your disk, you want to mount it with fstab, but why? Since it is an external disk, and I assume, not always connected, I believe in fact you should not use fstab, but rather let it automount via the file manager, or manually mount via the file manager depending on your settings.
I set a Label on the partition with GParted, and manually mount it with the file manager. The mount point is under /media/user/<Label>.

And a quote from a user in these forums about Label:
"With a label, it will automount the partition at /media/user/label; if you don't have a label it will use the UUID."

It makes me wonder why yours got mounted under /dev/usb1.

Yes, it will be there. Util-linux is a very basic part of Linux, almost as basic as coreutils. You have to have it for your system to function.
That's very much a matter of personal taste. Some people prefer to mount by hand in the traditional way.
You can set labels with e2label as well, which is simpler to use.
Or, with a usb stick, under the manufacturer's name
Me too. I've never seen a mountpoint like that.

OK, next time a boot/reboot I will pull the USB from that drive and we'll see what happens.

Highly likely you are correct.
is a relatively low reliability fstab entry.

Assuming 45adb858-db02-4aaf-97fc-93ead2892115 is the actual UUID of your filesystem on /dev/sdc1, which is extremely unlikely, the following would be a maximum reliability entry:
replacing 45adb858-db02-4aaf-97fc-93ead2892115 with the actual UUID of /dev/sdc1, would maximally reliable.

UUIDs are fine for hard brains, like computers have, but not so good for soft brains, like us humans have. There are alternatives to using /dev/sdc1 and UUID=. The best one for me is LABEL=. I think it would be for you too. Assuming your external 8G is plugged in and ready, do:Next, modify /etc/fstab to read like so:The LABEL you select can be anything your brain can cope with, subject to a length limit that depends on filesystem type, which is 16 for EXT4.

uuid is unique, so you can name your device. Or you can set a label which will be unique too and can be used to identify your device.
But without that the system will give it a random name, like sda, sdb, sdc or similar. In general you cannot be sure if you will get the same identifier at every boot, so the fstab entry may or may not be valid. That's why we suggest to use label or uuid.

Don't all modern distros use udev rules to ensure consistent naming of drives?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/per..._device_naming

As far as I knowUsing multithreaded kernel can cause surprises, the order of the detection is unpredictable. Also removable devices can affect the order devices. That's why better to use those persistent names.

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