External USB drive not mounting - Terminal help needed

[nealandrews]

Hi guys

I used the following terminal commands to stop MacOS automatically mounting an external USB drive...

sudo pico /etc/fstab
UUID=NUMBER none hfs rw,noauto

Source:
https://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-prevent-a-volume-from-mounting-at-boot-in-os-x/#

(The USB drive is attached to a Cinema Display, so I was trying to stop it mounting when I plug my MacBook Pro into the display, simply because it's an archive that I don't use often, and it's really noisy when it spins.)

However, now when I plug in the drive, it doesn't mount! Obviously. My bad, I know.

How do I reverse this Terminal command?

Many thanks

Neal

 

[gsahli]

sudo means superuser do - it gives you permission to write/edit protected files.
pico is a terminal/text editor
/etc/fstab is a file system table, where permanent mount info is kept.
The UUID line is supposed to identify a specific drive and give mount info.

Be very careful about changing this file.
You can probably fix this by removing the UUID line you added.
It might be safer if you copy and paste that file text (/etc/fstab) here and let us give specific instructions.

 

[nealandrews]

Thanks, gsahli.

All I did in the editor is add the following line...

UUID=905A7F53-BC89-389A-B34E-6120E685C78F none hfs rw,noauto

...as per the instructions here.

https://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-prevent-a-volume-from-mounting-at-boot-in-os-x/#

I just looked at etc/fstab file and all that is there is the above line of text.

 

[gsahli]

Then run this command to delete the fstab:
sudo rm /etc/fstab

 

[nealandrews]

Within the text editor, or just the normal terminal environment?

 

[gsahli]

in the terminal

 

[treekram]

If you have changed how use the drive and want it automatically mount every time it's connected, then deleting file is want you want, presuming there are no other entries that you have made to fstab.

If you still don't want the drive to mount automatically but will access the drive once in a while, you can keep the fstab file intact but you should be able to use Disk Utility to mount the drive manually.

 

[nealandrews]

Thanks guys!
[doublepost=1501091965][/doublepost]

Then run this command to delete the fstab:
sudo rm /etc/fstab

This worked perfectly, thank you.