Spare storage device issue's (Internal and External)

[Exzou]

I just installed Pop!_OS and I've been having some pains with Steam already. I've been at this for about 8 hours and I'm running out of Steam

I am trying to either use my existing Steam library, about 3GB on SSDs or slowly transfer my windows library to and external and then to an internal SSD again. I Can't get my external or my internal SSDs to show up, only my boot nvme. I've tried all kinds of options from CLI and from "Disks". Nothing has worked.

I either get "Device cant be written to due to privileges (paraphrasing)", Folder must be empty or the device just doesn't show up. Is there an up to date--detailed--walk-through for this? Most of what I'm seeing is from 2014-2018 and the layout of many things pertaining to picking a new drive are out of date.

[PunkHazard]

Does your device show up on Pop OS and not on steam? Or does it not show up at all even on Pop OS?

[Exzou]

Originally posted by PunkHazard:

Does your device show up on Pop OS and not on steam? Or does it not show up at all even on Pop OS?

It shows up in the file manager. One of them even shows up on boot.

[PunkHazard]

Originally posted by Exzou:

Originally posted by PunkHazard:

Does your device show up on Pop OS and not on steam? Or does it not show up at all even on Pop OS?

It shows up in the file manager. One of them even shows up on boot.

If it shows up on file manager, than it's probably a Steam issue and probably not the OS issue.

Don't know if you tried this, but you can set your steam folders in the settings. You can give it a try and see if it works.

I am assuming your internal and external drives are formatted in ext4 and not NTFS, because NTFS while can work, can also cause problems.

1. Go to Steam settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders. This will bring you to the Storage Manager.
2. Click on the "+" icon (probably next to /home) and find your desired drive.
3. Depending on how you partition your machine;

a) For internal and the same partition, it could be under ~/.steam/debian-installation
b) For internal but a different drive/partition, it should be under /media/your_drive_name
c) For external drive it should under /media/PopOS_Username/external_drive_name

4. Your drives should show up here. Select the drive and folder (the folder name should be SteamLIbrary) or you can also create a new one. After that, you can set this new folder as you primary, a Yellow Star should appear on the tab.

If this doesn't work, then it could be a number of other issues that we haven't discovered yet. In the mean time, see if this works.

[☥ Duat बुनॆ]

Are you new to Linux? There are probably some permissions issues.
https://www.linux.com/training-tutorials/understanding-linux-file-permissions/

[tfk]

On my system external drives need to be mounted first before they can be used. If Steam was running before mounting, maybe Steam doesn't see them? KDE has the option to auto mount drives. I believe Pop!_OS uses Gnome. There it can be done via the Disks utility.

https://youtu.be/_1oOXNVpkwk

Internal drives, or more specifically partitions also need a mount point. You see your boot nvme bacause the installation of Pop!_OS already made the necessary mount points for this drive.

You can use the Disks utility to do this also for internal drive partitions. Or you can edit the /etc/fstab file to register mount points.

The permissions part is separate from the mounting. If you've made a directory /home/<your user name>/games/ or whatever you want it to be and mounted the drive to this directory then you need to make your user is the owner of it to be able to write to it.

The quickest way is this command:

sudo chown -R <username>:<username> /home/<your user name>/games/

The second user name is the group which is often the same as your user name.

I generally recommend using a Linux file system (ext4 for example) instead of NTFS. Permissions are done differently and can cause trouble.

[Exzou]

I'm somewhat new to Linux, but I've dabbled with it multiple times over the years. Here's a bit more info.

I have 4 drives in this computer, 1 NVME and 3 SSD. The NVME is my POP!_OS boot drive, it is EXT4. The three SSD's are from when I daily drove Windows. I intend to use GNU/Linux exclusively (unless a game needs windows) now but I have nearly 3TB of games and saves from when I daily drove Windows. My end goal is to have all my games and progress working in Pop excluding any games which simply don't run in Pop at the moment.

So far my troubleshooting includes:
I have used fstab to permanently mound what was drive F in Windows (currently SDC2) into my Media folder. I have used Disks to get it to auto populate into MNT. I have already gone back into windows and set the power to shut off instead of fast-boot. Depending which folder I point Steam at I either get a "Folder must be empty" "Drive must be read/write" or some other error which eludes me at the moment.

I'm not really sure where to continue my troubleshooting at this point.

[Exzou]

Here is what I put into the fstab file:

/media/gamedisk ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=022,fmask=133 0 0

[tfk]

Try using the partition's uuid:

List uuid's per partition:

sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

fstab entry:

UUID=<the-uuid> /media/gamedisk ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=022,fmask=133 1 2

You could also try /home/<username>/games instead of /media/gamedisk if things won't work. The /media directory is meant for removable devices.

You could also try 'defaults' instead of all flags.

[Exzou]

Originally posted by tfk:

You could also try 'defaults' instead of all flags.

I'm not familiar with what you're referring to.

[tfk]

I meant the fstab entry:

UUID=<the-uuid> /media/gamedisk ntfs defaults 1 2

[Exzou]

Your a Wizard tfk! It works, it finally works!!

[tfk]

Yay! Well done to you for being persistent in solving this issue.