However, when running WSL, mounting removable drives inside the WSL environment isn’t that easy. Windows Subsystem for Linux allows you to manually mount drives using the mount command. WSL will automatically mount all fixed NTFS drives. So, if you have internal fixed C: and E: drives, you’ll see them mounted at /mnt/c and /mnt/e in your WSL environment. For external, removable drives, you’ll have to manually mount those in WSL. Davis also allows you to mount external drives like USBs, CDs, and DVDs. These devices must be formatted using a Windows file system like NTFS or FAT. Similarly to internal drives, external drives will remain accessible in Windows 11 when mounted within the Windows Subsystem for the Linux environment. Below is how one can mount an external drive in a WSL environment.
How to mount an external drive in WSL
As mentioned above, one can mount external drives like USB, CD, and other devices in Windows System for Linux. For example, if you have an external drive attached to your Windows 11 computer using the drive letter F: you can mount it in WSL using the commands below. You’ll now be able to access the drive content in Linux at the mount point /mnt/f. To unmount the drive, simply run the commands below. That should do it! Conclusion: This post showed you how to mount an external, removable drive in a WSL environment. If you find any error above or have something to add, please use the comment form below.
