In my example, the mount point is /media/mpdr1 and the FS is /dev/sdd1 /mountpoint-path = /media/mpdr1 filesystem=/dev/sdd1 Why this command ? Well, in fact, with some external devices I used to face some issues : during data transfer from the device to the internal drive, some errors occurred and the device was unmounted and remounted again in a different folder. In such situations, the command mountpoint gave a positive result even if the FS wasn't properly mounted, that's why I added the df part. And if the device is not properly mounted, the command tries to unmount, to create the folder (if it exists already it will also work) and finally mount the FS on the given mount point. Show Sample Output

It may be helpful in case you need to umount a directory and some process is preventing you to do so keeping the folder busy. The lsof may process the +D option slowly and may require a significant amount of memory because it will descend the full dir tree. On the other hand it will neither follow symlinks nor other file systems.

Instead of using force un-mounting, it's better to find the processes that currently use the relevant folder. Taken from: http://www.linuxhowtos.org/Tips%20and%20Tricks/findprocesses.htm Show Sample Output

Alternative if "Lazy unmount" (umount -l) doesn't obey. Alternative for NFS: umount -f /media/sdb1 Use with caution: forcing to unmount a busy partition can cause data loss!