I’m running a Ubuntu server on my old laptop with an external HDD connected to it. The external HDD is powered independently from the laptop, as it is plugged into the wall.
During a power outage, my laptop remains operational due to its battery, but the HDD shuts down. When power is restored, my laptop does not automatically remount the HDD, and I have to reboot the system manually to access it.
Does anyone know how I can resolve this issue?
Edit: Not sure if this added context changes anything, but this is the HDD I’m using. It’s a 3.5" HDD that gets its power directly from the wall.
It counts as long as barriers are on
https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto.html#Barriers_on_by_default
External drives expect you to ensure writes complete first. If you don’t then smart software with copy-on-write and consistency checks can survive power loss (at the cost of losing recent changes). Other software which assumes a reliable drive can get wrecked.
Lots of file systems can not handle random power losses because they don’t force continous integrity of the disk file system, that’s why FAT formatted drives so often get corrupted