Part of CachyOS Wiki Notes. From the official CachyOS wiki (last updated 2026-08-27).

Automounting Drives at Boot

Prerequisite: root/sudo access.

NTFS warning: NTFS is unstable under Linux with the ntfs, ntfs3 or ntfs-3g drivers. Prefer ext4/XFS/Btrfs.

Two methods:

• systemd mount files — safer; a mistake won’t stop the machine booting.
• /etc/fstab — advanced; a mistake can make the system unbootable.

Find UUIDs:

lsblk -f

sudo fdisk -l

Method 1 — systemd mount unit

Mount point /home/user/games → unit file /etc/systemd/system/home-$USER-games.mount (slashes become hyphens, dashes become escape codes, in /etc/systemd/system). For odd names:

systemd-escape -p --suffix=mount "/home/grzegorz/brzęczyszczykiewicz"

Template:

[Unit]
Description=
[Mount]
What=
Where=
Type=
Options=
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Filled example:

[Unit]
Description=Mount games drive (/home/user/games)
[Mount]
What=UUID=4e55896f-3f1f-4bc5-aa8a-fec099689cd9
Where=/home/user/games
Type=ext4
Options=defaults,exec,rw,noatime
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable it:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now home-$USER-games.mount

Minimal version (micro /etc/systemd/system/mnt-foo.mount):

[Unit]
Description=Mount drive
[Mount]
What=UUID=<partition UUID>
Where=/mnt/foo
Type=somefs
Options=defaults
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Options worth knowing: _netdev for NAS mounts, nofail for non-critical drives.

Method 2 — /etc/fstab

sudo nano /etc/fstab

(The mount point /media/windows must exist.)

UUID=08A24E90A24E81E4 /media/windows ntfs3 defaults,nofail,uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,user,exec,umask=000 0 0

• defaults = rw,suid,dev,exec,auto,nouser,async
• nofail = keep booting if the mount fails
• uid=1000 / gid=1000 = ownership; rw; user = allow non-root mounting; exec; umask=000 = permissive
• First 0 = dump (deprecated), second 0 = fsck order (root = 1, btrfs root = 0, others 0 or 2)
• Short form UUID=<partition UUID> /media/foo somefs is equivalent to UUID=<partition UUID> /media/foo somefs defaults 0 0

Apply:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo mount -a

Optional convenience symlink:

ln -s /media/windows ~/Windows