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It seems to me that having both /mnt and /media is a little redundant. Is there any tangible difference between the two that I'm not aware of?

Is there a standard that most people follow for where to mount things, e.g. use one for certain types of devices, or is this completely subjective?

goric
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5 Answers5

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The new standard is that /media is where the system mounts removable media, and /mnt is for you to mount things manually.

See the filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS) for details.

Mikel
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    By the way, that website link is unclear about the purpose of /mnt in this context. – djangofan Dec 01 '11 at 16:01
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    It says `/mnt` is for the system administrator. This implies that `/mnt` should not be used by the system itself. So if your computer automatically mounts a CD or DVD, it should mount it in `/media`, not `/mnt`. – Mikel Jan 26 '12 at 01:23
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    I certainly agree with that (with you), but the article didn't explicitly say that. – djangofan Jan 30 '12 at 17:32
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    if /mnt is for temporary and /media is for removable where should permanent non-removable devices/partitions be mounted. i.e. an internal HDD which is formatted as NTFS but needs to be automounted at startup? – Caltor Oct 17 '12 at 13:48
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    Without re-reading the spec, I'm pretty sure that since nothing else should use that drive unless explicitly pointed there, you can mount that drive's partitions anywhere you like, e.g. `/data` or `/a`. – Mikel Oct 18 '12 at 13:05
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Another important difference not mentioned yet is that devices mounted under /mnt will not appear in Nautilus' left pane, whilst those mounted under /media (as well as auto-detected devices that are not mounted yet) will.

So for example, if you don't want a certain partition to appear in the "Devices" subsection of Nautilus' left pane, you should create a subdirectory for it under /mnt, write an entry for said partition in your /etc/fstab (or do it through the Disks utility) and assign the newly created directory as its mount point:

/dev/{block_device_name)   /mnt/{descriptive_name}   {fs_type}   {mount,options}  0 2

Even better, add the noauto mount option in fstab/Disks and then your partition won't appear in Nautilus nor will it be mounted (preventing accidental mess with its files)! So for example, in the case of a dual-boot with Windows you could have:

/dev/sda1   /mnt/win7   ntfs-3g   rw,user,noauto,gid=100,uid=1000,nls=utf8,umask=002   0 0

in your /etc/fstab, and hence have your Windows partition not showing up in Nautilus (but still accessible through the mount command if you ever need it).

Here is a screenshot I made with a liveUSB, showing all three cases: Nautilus displaying unmounted/mounted devices that go to /media but not to /mnt

  • auto-detected devices not mounted ("16 GB Volume" /dev/sdb1)
  • devices mounted on a /media subdirectory and showing up in Nautilus ("iso" /dev/sdb2)
  • my Windows partition /dev/sda3 mounted on /mnt but not showing up in Nautilus left pane (it would be the same if it wasn't mounted since I have an entry for it in my fstab).

On the contrary, I want my shared data partition to show up in nautilus, so I assigned a /media mount point to it and set the auto mount option, so I can just click on Data and access it from the GUI.

To me this is THE big difference between those two directories, that I learned about when trying to do just what I explained ;-)

neitsab
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    I'd add that if one wants Nautilus not to show some mount outside of `/mnt/`, they have to specify a flag `x-gvfs-hide` when mounting it. E. g., here's how it could be done inside fstab file: `/mnt/my-drive/path/to/my-folder /home/my-username/my-folder-shortcut none bind,x-gvfs-hide 0 0`. To me this is THE big deal. If you agree it's a useful hint, I'd appreciate if you append it to your answer. – whyer Oct 28 '18 at 19:06
  • Also of note: It seems that Nemo does the same and ALSO detects network mounts in your home directory. Though, I personally find that a little nauseating. IMO `/media/whatever` is a little cleaner. – musicin3d Jul 07 '20 at 03:31
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As I understand it, /media is for mounting things like optical drives and other temporary media, where /mnt is usually for permanently attached storage (generally internal disks).

Of course, you can also mount a device anywhere you want... the /mnt and /media directories are more conventional though.

kiswa
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    You understand it incorrectly! `/mnt` is proposed as a place for users to manually mount temporary resources, whereas `/media` should be used for static/automatically mounted devices. Check freedesktop.org – underscore_d Oct 05 '15 at 17:40
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/mnt was already accepted as a place to manually and temporarily mount external media. The /media directory was created as a place under which multiple media, external or otherwise, could be automatically mounted.

psusi
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This thing goes deeper: I like to keep internal drives mounted on /mnt, and external removables on /media.

This post illustrates a difference in functioning, where /media blocked access to certain system and user processes, (because of the default limiting umask attached to any drive that is mounted) where as /mnt acted like the host filesystem.

Fabby
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Sam
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    Having more lax permissions is not a reason to recommend something. Especially when it's contrary to FreeDesktop recommendations. See my comment on another misguided answer. – underscore_d Oct 05 '15 at 17:41