# Secondary drive mounted but Discourse not using it

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [December 2, 2025, 9:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211 "2025-12-02T21:51:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Jim\_Starkweather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jim_starkweather/32/181916_2.png) [@Jim\_Starkweather](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jim_Starkweather)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 9:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/1 "2025-12-02T21:51:30Z")

</div>

I have a secondary drive mounted via Lightsail. Mapped to a directory and have rsync’d all my uploads to it. However even after changing the app.yml to the below scheme and restarting Discourse it refuses to save the file to the new location. Any ideas?

```plaintext
volume:
host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads
guest: /forum_images

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2025, 12:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/2 "2025-12-03T00:17:40Z")

</div>

Did you rsync or move the existing images there? Do you not want the existing images? They are in the default directory.

File permissions?

I think you’ll need to rebuild to get it to make the default directory where the uploads go.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Jim\_Starkweather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jim_starkweather/32/181916_2.png) [@Jim\_Starkweather](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jim_Starkweather)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2025, 12:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/3 "2025-12-03T00:20:30Z")

</div>

I used rsync. The forum has 190gb of user uploaded images so yes, definitely want them.

The user is ubunto for both the discourse files and the ones moved. The permissions are the same as well. I will try a rebuild then.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Jim\_Starkweather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jim_starkweather/32/181916_2.png) [@Jim\_Starkweather](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jim_Starkweather)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2025, 12:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/4 "2025-12-03T00:38:50Z")

</div>

I did a rebuild and it’s still saving to: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads/default/

And not: /forum\_images/default/

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2025, 1:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/5 "2025-12-03T13:04:38Z")

</div>

> [@Jim\_Starkweather](#):
>
> ```plaintext
> volume:
> host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads
> guest: /forum_images
> 
> ```

Oh. You got it backward.

```plaintext

volumes:
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
      guest: /shared
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
      guest: /var/log

```

So you want to add

```plaintext
  - volume:
      host: /forum_images
      guest: /shared/uploads

```

Then you can

```plaintext
./launcher destroy app;./launcher start app

```

Then you can

```plaintext
./launcher enter app
ls /shared/uploads

```

to see if the stuff is there

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Jim\_Starkweather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jim_starkweather/32/181916_2.png) [@Jim\_Starkweather](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jim_Starkweather)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/6 "2025-12-03T18:46:28Z")

</div>

Thanks Jay. Yup that was it. All working as it should now.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2026, 6:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/secondary-drive-mounted-but-discourse-not-using-it/390211/7 "2026-01-02T18:47:22Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.