Simplest Method to Share Flash Drive Contents attached to Proxmox

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Proxmagic

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Oct 29, 2025
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I attached a Flash drive to my simple Proxmox server (just running a container Pi-hole as a secondary DNS server). I did a manual backup and while I know there are videos on installing the Proxmox Backup Server, for now I just wanted to keep it simple. Plenty of the space on the flash drive with 128gb and the backup only used 305mb.

So I wanted to copy that backup to my Windows PC where I have a second drive being used for a host of data and recovery files. What is the easiest way to connect to that Directory (what I created) /mnt/pve/recovery and be able to access its contents so I can have another backup located off the host Proxmox server?
 
Hi. For instance:

lsblk
df -hT

In the output of lsblk find your flash drive partition (look for the size similar to 128 GB and it should NOT yet be visible in the output of df -hT ).
Assuming it is /dev/sdb1

mkdir /mnt2
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt2

In the simplest case the system should detect the proper filesystem type for mount command above.
If not, you'll have to check what filesystem type is in the flash drive.

When the flash drive is mounted at /mnt2 you will be able to copy your backup to /mnt2
If I understand your post OK, the backup is in /mnt/pve/recovery so execute:

cp -aiv /mnt/pve/recovery /mnt2
sync
umount /mnt2

Then you can eject the flash drive.

Let us know if it have worked or not.
 
Thank you for your assistance. I wasn't clear I think on my goal if it is feasible. I want to leave that flash drive plugged into my Poxmox server and by some means allow my Windows 11 computer to see it (IE. mapped drive?). This way I can on occasion back up the file to a folder on my D:\ designated drive. This would give me dual backup's a process I am doing also with my Unraid & Qnap setups.
 
The simplest way to accomplish what you're after is to install samba on pve, like so

apt install samba

you can then defined /mnt/pve/recovery (or whatever your mountpoint is) as a smb share, and access it on your windows machine using \\ip.of.my.pve\sharename

this is not a good solution, however, as a usb device is meant to be transient.
 
Thank you both. I have installed Samba and even looked at the config file with SCP. Then spent an hour trying to find the syntax I need to add to the config file. And your right, /mnt/pve/recovery is the mount point. Just don't know enough Linux yet.

I spent some time also looking at Add: SMB/CIFS wondering if that method would work, though in this particular case it looks like it isn't. I did see where I could point to my UnRaid NAS and setup a folder there.

Still, I would like to 'learn' how to get this attached flash drive seen by Windows. So Ignorance prevails to ask what this the syntax I will need to place in the config file? Something like mount = /mnt/pve/recovery?
 
I'm typing from memory. In W11:

cd \path\where\you\want\to\keep_files
scp -pr user@ip.address.of.pve:/mnt/pve/recovery .

where user is root or possible other user in PVE host, if you make other account for this purpose.
Note . (dot) at the end of the command!

Winscp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinSCP is an easy GUI tool from https://winscp.net/

About "Add: SMB/CIFS" you're right: it is for the opposite situation than yours.

For configuring Samba in a secure way I'm not undertaking in a short forum post :). You can google for detailed instructions.

Good luck!
 
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