You could use the mountpoint command to check if there is something mounted on destination drive like: if ! mountpoint $DESTINATION_DIR >/dev/null; then         mount -t ntfs PARTUUID=c6040663-9321-4d28-91f0-2f3eb35f72b7 /mnt/Ext3TB_Data1/ fi if ! mountpoint $DESTINATION_DIR >/dev/null; then         mount -t ntfs PARTUUID=f88c9c86-e44d-4846-9fbe-305074347e97 /mnt/Ext3TB_Video1/ fi I'll leave it up to you to handle what to do if the drive doesn't mount. Brian Cluff On 9/9/20 1:34 PM, AZ Pete via PLUG-discuss wrote: > Hi all, > > I was finally able to do away with an aging Windows machine and > replace it with a Raspberry Pi 4 running Buster.  The only purpose for > this server is to backup selected folders and files from other servers > onto two external USB drives for offsite storage. I've automated the > backup process using rsync and a cron job. All is working well and the > backups are happening on schedule. > However, currently I have to manually mount each of the external > drives. This isn't a terribly big issue since the drives are rotated > to offsite storage only once per month. But, if the Pi gets rebooted, > the drives are not being auto-mounted and the backups will then fail. > I've tried putting an entry in /etc/fstab to auto-mount them at boot, > but if they drives are not connected at boot time, I've found the the > Pi doesn't boot (it just seems to hang). > > Here is how I mount the drives. > mount -t ntfs PARTUUID=c6040663-9321-4d28-91f0-2f3eb35f72b7 > /mnt/Ext3TB_Data1/ > mount -t ntfs PARTUUID=f88c9c86-e44d-4846-9fbe-305074347e97 > /mnt/Ext3TB_Video1/ > > How can I "conditionally" mount an external drive based on if the > drive is currently connected? I could write a script that checks if > the particular partition (PARTUUID) is currently connected but not > mounted and put this script in the rc.local folder to be executed at > boot. > Is this the best way? I'm sure that others have encountered this issue > and wanted to know what the "best practices" are on how to achieve this? > > Any thoughts would be appreciated. > > Thanks, > Peter > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss