Written by Charlie Chick the 12 Oct 08 at 11:12.
Category: Hardware support.
Related project:
Nothing/Others.
Status: New
Rationale
I would like ubuntu to recognise new hard drives automatically instead of having to jump through various hoops and even edit configuation files, which is frightening for a beginner like me!
After all, Windoze recognises a new drive, so Ubuntu should do no less.
I think that auto mounting of hard drive partitions could be helpful, but if enabled by default, there should also an option to override this behavior by partition.
There are moments that it does not makes sense to mount some partitions, I have some partitions where I have installed other operative systems, and I think it would be messy or risky if all of those partitions were available always to all users.
Windows doesn't auto recognize new drivers right away. You first have to go to computer management and select disk management. I think the way OS X does it where it pops up asking you what you want to do with a new drive that hasn't been formatted before would be best. Then just automount it on start up unless you put in an exception to not mount it. It shouldn't be the other way.
... Do you mean brand new as in no files on it, or new as in new to the computer?
Brand New:
Windows does not do this... You have to go to disk management. Similarly in Ubuntu you have gparted. I don't think blank hard-drives should auto-popup for a number of reasons. What if it is encrypted? What if it has disk images on it? What if it is broken and needs data recovery? You are just asking a newbie to wipe some data. If you know what you are doing then you should know the various partition tools.
Already had Files:
Ubuntu already does show any partitions it recognizes and displays them as favorites in nautilus (that pane on the left). They are not mounted by default, but clicking them mounts them. This is perfect behavior IMO. I think it automounts and even open folders for external drives.