"persistent" USB drive

Jimbob · September 8, 2020 at 5:17 AM

I'm running LibreElec on a RPi2. A USB drive that I use to transfer files (the old fashioned way) is seen by LibreElec as a previous incarnation (Linux Mint distro) of what it is now. I understand that this has to do with the drive being mounted and that it has to be unmounted. I have successfully connected to the RPi2 using ssh but get the following when I try to unmount the USB drive:

LibreELEC:/ # unmount /dev/sda

-sh: unmount: not found

Any ideas or pointers? TIA.

tokul · September 8, 2020 at 5:33 AM

Quote from Jimbob

I'm running LibreElec on a RPi2. A USB drive that I use to transfer files (the old fashioned way) is seen by LibreElec as a previous incarnation (Linux Mint distro) of what it is now. I understand that this has to do with the drive being mounted and that it has to be unmounted. I have successfully connected to the RPi2 using ssh but get the following when I try to unmount the USB drive:

LibreELEC:/ # unmount /dev/sda

-sh: unmount: not found

Any ideas or pointers? TIA.

umount

check mount table before you try to umount devices. You might be disconnecting something that is in use. /dev/sda is only first detected scsi/sata disk. It does not have to be your usb drive.

Jimbob · September 8, 2020 at 3:45 PM

Quote from tokul

umount

check mount table before you try to umount devices. You might be disconnecting something that is in use. /dev/sda is only first detected scsi/sata disk. It does not have to be your usb drive.

That's subtle! Thanks.

Checked already. /dev/sda IS the USB drive that I can't unmount.

Anyway, umount worked where unmount didn't but it didn't resolve my problem. When I plugged the USB stick in again, the RPi "saw" it as the old drive/label/directory structure. Is there some file that needs to be edited or deleted?

tokul · September 9, 2020 at 10:34 AM

attach drive, run blkid command and show command's output

or explain what you expect to see on drive.

Jimbob · September 9, 2020 at 3:51 PM

Solved. Used the Disks utility on Linux Mint to remove all partitions from drive and then did a full format on it. When I opened the drive, there appeared to be a single partition with the new label. When I deleted that, there seemed to be another partition with the old name. Disks did not give me the option to delete that so I formatted it.