Audience: Admin

External Storage

NeuralDrive is designed to work with external storage devices for model persistence and data management. This is particularly useful for systems running from a read-only medium (CD) or for users who maintain a large library of models that exceed the size of a standard USB drive.

Auto-Mounting

The system includes pre-configured udev rules that automatically detect and mount external storage devices (USB, SATA, etc.) as they are connected.

Mount Point: /mnt/external/<LABEL>
Directory Name: The drive's volume label is used as the directory name. If no label exists, the device identifier (e.g., sdb1) is used.

Configuring External Model Storage

By default, models are stored in /var/lib/neuraldrive/models/. You can redirect this to an external drive using one of two methods.

Method 1: Bind Mount (Recommended)

Edit /etc/fstab to mount your external storage directory directly over the default models directory. This is the most reliable method for ensuring persistence.

/mnt/external/MyModels/ollama /var/lib/neuraldrive/models/ none bind 0 0

Method 2: Symlinking

Alternatively, you can create a symbolic link from the default location to the external drive.

# Stop the Ollama service
sudo systemctl stop ollama

# Move existing models to the external drive
sudo mv /var/lib/neuraldrive/models/* /mnt/external/MyModels/

# Create the symlink
sudo ln -s /mnt/external/MyModels/ /var/lib/neuraldrive/models

# Restart the service
sudo systemctl start ollama

Use Cases

CD Mode with External Storage: When running NeuralDrive from a CD, you can still have a persistent model library by connecting an external USB drive.
Shared Model Library: Multiple NeuralDrive instances can share a single large external drive containing a comprehensive library of LLMs.
Supplementing USB Storage: If your primary USB drive runs low on space, you can seamlessly add a second drive to expand your available model storage.