Hi to everyone. I need help, please. I have two hard drives (one SSD as my primary drive and one HDD for storage). Zorin OS has no problem using the SSD as my primary drive. That's not the issue. What the issue here is that with my secondary HDD, every time I restart my computer and try to access my HDD, there is always this interminable pause before I am able to access the files on it. From what I have seen online, there is something called "fstab" that needs to be edited. I would rather see if there is another way (to make the secondary HDD able to be read at native speeds by Zorin) using a graphical user interface. I am including two pictures below to help anyone who is able to help. Thanks.
EDIT: I just realized I could've posted in the hardware subforum. Sorry!
I don't know about the read speed but the fstab file is where you can describe to the operating system which devices should it look for and what actions to take, for things like where to place them, etc. The first screenshot, the mount option for that device, is the graphical equivalent of that file. But I would say that typically this isn't required as any plugged in devices should be recognized and mounted automatically.
Here's a quick example with a USB. I provided a Display Name of "BLUE" just to change something, but you could also change the Mount Point if you want to. This refers to where in your file system will you find your files. If you decide to use something like ~/Documents/important_files, for example, that's where your hard drive files will be. Note that the directory "important_files" (or whatever) needs to exist already. Also, don't use a location that contains files otherwise you won't be able to access them (they won't be deleted, just not visible).
In your case it looks like it's already set to mount at boot but if you want to make it more explicit just uncheck the session defaults. It won't hurt to try, perhaps this makes a difference somehow but I really don't know how it would.
Thanks, @zenzen, for your reply. While it didn't solve my issue per se, it did get me thinking and led me to revisit the options found in the Disks application. I set the "identify as" field to "/dev/sda1" and that resulted in the mount point changing to "/mnt/sda1" and now the secondary drive is accessible instantly. There is no interminable delay anymore. I did a little more digging online, and it appears that this is the case when the "media" mount point is used (this has happened to others, too; I am not the only one). The secondary drive acts like how a regular internal drive would in terms of responsiveness, so OK. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of sending me a notification (through the Files application), which did not happen before. So I have since disabled all notifications on Zorin OS (when I used Windows, I had all notifications disabled, anyway). I will mark this as the solution, but if someone else sees this post and has a better suggestion, I'm open.
The way you asked this makes this question tricky to answer...
If the external drive was formatted to ext4, it would have better caching and read/write speeds, by a small amount. But it would not be instantaneous, as you ask.
You might see a little improvement.
Would you mind if you sharing some of the links where it's mentioned that the mount point makes such as drastic difference, if you still have them at hand? It's really interesting that is the case and could be helpful to know more about it.
As for using a different file format, again, I don't see how it would make such as drastic change. EXT4 is what I'd recommend anyway, but I've used different formats on external drives without issues, at least not noticeable ones as in this case.
But just to be clear, I'm talking about an internal drive that is being read as a removable drive. I want for it to be seen as a fully internal drive. I suspect the removable status is causing Zorin to be slow with its initial read of the drive every time I reboot the PC. I will post a separate follow-up topic about this.
