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Mount Physical Drive

Identify Disks​

Press WIN + x and then select "Terminal (Admin)" or right click on the start menu and select "Terminal (Admin)". Then execute the following command to identify the disks

GET-CimInstance -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"

identify-disk

Each disk has a device ID like \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1. The 1 at the end typically indicates the Disk number as shown in the Disk Management tool. Open up Disk Management by press WIN + x and then selecting "Disk Management".

disk-management

As can be seen, there is a Disk 0, 1, and 2. This corresponds to \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0, \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1, and \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2.

Attach Disk​

Once the disk is identified, copy the "DeviceDI" value and attach the drive. As an example, I will use \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1

wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --bare

This attaches the drive but does not mount it. The disk must be formatted with the ext4 partition before it can be mounted.

attach-disk

Log into WSL

wsl

Identify Disk Pt. 2​

View block devices to identify the disk

lsblk

lsblk

In this example, I can see the disk sdd is the 128G disk I attached. It needs to be formatted and mounted.

Format Disk​

Format the disk with ext4.

sudo mkfs.ext4 -m 0 /dev/sdd

The -m 0 sets the reserved space for the disk to 0 and is optional. The disk is now ready to be mounted.

Mount Disk​

Create a mount point for the drive. I prefer to mount to /media

sudo mkdir /media/ssd

Then mount the drive

sudo mount /dev/sdd /media/ssd

Confirm the drive has been mounted

df -h

Get the UUID of the disk and save it

lsblk -f

This mount is only temporary until the .wslconfig is updated. First, add an entry to the FSTAB file

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Below the comment, add the following, updating the the UUID to match

UUID=<UUID> /media/ssd ext4 defaults 0 0

Press CTRL + x, then y, then ENTER. Exit Ubuntu

exit

Auto Mount​

There are two actions that need to occur in order for the disk to be mounted inside WSL to the correct location. The FSTAB has already been updated. Next, Windows needs to mount the physical disk at login. To do this, a scheduled task can be created.

Schedule Task​

In the windows search, type in "Task Scheduler" and select the application

ts-app

Once open, on the right side click "Create Task...". Then follow the steps below:

  1. Set the Name to "WSL Mount Task"
  2. Check "Run only when user is logged on"
  3. Check "Run with highest privileges"

ts-general

Click the "Triggers" tab. Then follow the steps below:

  1. Click "New..." to create a new Triggers
  2. In the "Begin the task" drop down, select "At log on"
  3. Ensure the "Enabled" checkbox is checked
  4. Click "OK" to add the Trigger

ts-trigger

Click the "Actions" tab. Then follow the steps below:

  1. Click "New..." to create an Action
  2. For "Program/script" type cmd.exe
  3. For "Add arguments" paste in /c wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --bare replacing PHYSICALDRIVE1 as needed.
  4. Click "OK" to add the Action

ts-action

Click the "Conditions" tab. Then uncheck all boxes.

Click the "Settings" tab. Then follow the steps below:

  1. Check "Allow task to be run on demand"
  2. Check "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed"
  3. Check "Stop the task if it runs longer than 3 days"
  4. Check "If the task does not end when requested for it to stop"

Once all sections have been completed click "OK".

Reboot the computer.

Verify​

Press WIN + x and then select "Terminal(Admin)". Then open wsl

wsl

Once logged in, verify that the disk is mounted

df -h

The disk should now be mounted.