Fixed: Umbrel 1.7+ not recognizing apps/data on second SSD drive after update

Support and Troubleshooting
1

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a problem I recently faced and how I managed to fix it, in case anyone else goes through the same.

My Setup:

  • Umbrel server with two drives: A 256GB drive for the OS and a 2TB external SSD where all my old Umbrel 1.5 data and apps (Bitcoin Core, Electrs, Lightning) were stored.

The Problem: After updating to umbrelOS 1.7.3 and restoring my user backup, the system booted up as a fresh install. It only recognized the 256GB drive and wanted to download the entire blockchain from scratch. Because umbrelOS 1.7+ uses an immutable file system, any changes to /etc/fstab are wiped on every reboot, meaning the system couldn’t automatically see my 2TB SSD data anymore.

The Solution: The fix is to use the official custom-hooks feature. This allows you to run a script before Umbrel starts, and it survives reboots.

Here is the step-by-step to fix it via SSH:

  1. Create the custom-hooks directory: sudo mkdir -p /home/umbrel/umbrel/custom-hooks

  2. Create and edit the pre-start script: sudo nano /home/umbrel/umbrel/custom-hooks/pre-start

  3. Paste the following configuration inside the file (make sure to replace /dev/sdb1 with your actual second drive ID):

Bash

#!/bin/bash

# 1. Mount the second drive
mkdir -p /mnt/2nddrive
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/2nddrive

# 2. Ensure the Umbrel destination folder exists
mkdir -p /home/umbrel/umbrel/app-data

# 3. Bind mount the entire app-data from the SSD to the new Umbrel structure
mount --bind /mnt/2nddrive/umbrel/umbrel/app-data /home/umbrel/umbrel/app-data

(Save and exit the editor)

  1. Make the script executable, fix permissions, and reboot:

Bash

sudo chmod +x /home/umbrel/umbrel/custom-hooks/pre-start
sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /mnt/2nddrive/umbrel/umbrel/app-data
sudo reboot

After the reboot, the system successfully pointed back to my 2TB SSD, and all my apps (Bitcoin, Electrs, Lightning) resumed working perfectly without redownloading anything!

Hope this helps anyone running a dual-drive setup on the new umbrelOS.

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