Linux - How to figure out what harddrives are attached?

Question

So I have a server that has a few harddrives in it, all formatted and mounted. However I'm told there is another drive attached to it. How do I find out what drives are attached? How do I find out the device filename for this new drive (that's not mounted)

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 22 '15 at 05:43

13

fdisk -l

edited Jan 22 '15 at 05:43

HopelessN00b

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answered Dec 16 '09 at 11:22

Chopper3

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What "mandatory extra characters"? Just `fdisk -l` will list all devices mentioned in `/proc/partitions`, which is just what's needed in this case. – sleske Dec 16 '09 at 11:26
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sorry, serverfault.com doesn't accept answers with less that 15 characters, so sometimes, when you have a very short but appropriate answer you have to add padding before you can click ok :) – Chopper3 Dec 16 '09 at 11:30
say it like: the best way I have found is: fdisk -l – Skaperen Feb 07 '15 at 12:30

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

For those coming here from a search - this is (currently) an old question with old answers, but there are other newer posts that answer this question better.

The solution I prefer is:

root# lsblk -io NAME,TYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,FSTYPE,MODEL

NAME    TYPE    SIZE MOUNTPOINT FSTYPE            MODEL
sdb     disk    2.7T                              WDC WD30EZRX-00D
`-sdb1  part    2.7T            linux_raid_member 
  `-md0 raid1   2.7T /home      xfs               
sda     disk    1.8T                              ST2000DL003-9VT1
|-sda1  part  196.1M /boot      ext3              
|-sda2  part  980.5M [SWAP]     swap              
|-sda3  part    8.8G /          ext3            
|-sda4  part      1K                              
`-sda5  part    1.8T /samba     xfs               
sdc     disk    2.7T                              WDC WD30EZRX-00D
`-sdc1  part    2.7T            linux_raid_member 
  `-md0 raid1   2.7T /home      xfs               
sr0     rom    1024M                              CDRWDVD DH-48C2S

References:

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 16 '09 at 18:20

The sg_* utilities might also be useful:

$ sudo sg_map -i
/dev/sg0  /dev/sda  ATA       WDC WD5000BEVT-2  01.0
/dev/sg1  /dev/scd0  Optiarc   BD ROM BC-5500S   1.83
/dev/sg2  /dev/sdb  ATA       WDC WD5000BEVT-0  01.0
/dev/sg3  /dev/sdc  WD        PP III Studio II  0817

There are lots of other commands in the sg utilities such as sg_scan, sg_readcap and so on.

Also if you are booted from a redhat/centos cd you can switch to an alternate console and use the "list-harddrives" command to show disks attached to the system.

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 16 '09 at 11:24

Depends on how the drive is attached.

ATA/SATA drives should normally be detected on bootup. Look into the boot log (/var/log/syslog, /var/log/messages, output of dmesg).

There should also be a list of recognized partitions for all partitioned drives under /proc/partitions.

For hotplugged drives (e.g. USB) it depends on how the distribution manages them. Usually modern distros use udev (older might use hotplug or hald). The log is configurable, either a separate log under /var/log, or in the general log messages or syslog).

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 16 '09 at 12:05

2

fdisk -l

dmesg

/var/log/message..

edited Dec 16 '09 at 12:05

sleske

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answered Dec 16 '09 at 11:48

Rajat

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Linux - How to figure out what harddrives are attached?

5 Answers5