Consider a slight alternative on the currently top voted answer:
sudo mkdir /mnt/<usb_drive_letter>
sudo mount -t drvfs <usb_drive_letter>: /mnt/<usb_drive_Letter> -o uid=$(id -u $USER),gid=$(id -g $USER),metadata
For a USB drive which is assigned in Windows to H:, for example:
sudo mkdir /mnt/h
sudo mount -t drvfs h: /mnt/h -o uid=$(id -u $USER),gid=$(id -g $USER),metadata
In general, the other method will work, but note that drives that are manually mounted this way do not follow the normal WSL automount settings.
Most fixed Windows drives will be mounted:
- In
/mnt/<drive_letter for each drive.
- With the default WSL user and its primary group as the owner of the mount.
- A default umask/fmask/dmask of 000
- The
metadata disabled for performance, which means only a "simplified permission" model will be used to map Windows/NTFS and Linux permissions.
However, USB drives that are manually mounted do not follow the [automount] settings.
At the very least, you'll probably want your WSL user to be the owner, which is done with the -o uid=$(id -u $USER),gid=$(id -g $USER) (usually, this is the same as -o uid=1000,gid=1000 in a default Ubuntu/WSL installation).
Adding in the metadata option can be useful if you want to preserve permissions via rsync or cp -a.