How to Find the Device Associated with a Mounted USB Drive in Linux

How do you find the device (e.g. /dev/*) for a mounted USB drive in Linux (Ubuntu 10.04)? I'm trying to format a Cruzer USB flash drive, and when I plug it in, the icon for the mounted filesystem appears on my desktop. However, when I open GParted, it doesn't list the filesystem as an option to partition.

The recommendations I've found through Google include monitoring tail -f /var/log/messages, which they claim should list the device name when the drive is mounted, but this never happens for me. I've also read that the USB drive would usually be linked to /dev/sdb, but this appears as a broken link on my filesystem. How else would I find the device?

Cerin

Posted 2010-06-23T14:33:06.460

Reputation: 6 081

Answers

You can look at mount, dmesg, /proc/partitions... There are many ways to find it.

Daenyth

Posted 2010-06-23T14:33:06.460

Reputation: 5 742

Ya, dmesg will tell you the device when you plug it in... unlike the others, it'll tell you the device even before it is mounted (which it sounds like it isn't automatically being mounted to an actual directory for you). Look at dmesg right after plugging in your USB stick. – Jarvin – 2010-06-23T15:03:42.160

Thanks, I found that by running "mount" I get a list of all mounted devices and their file locations. – Cerin – 2010-06-23T17:54:07.753

1+1 for mount. The clonezilla docs say to use dmesg to find the name of my usb drive, but that generates several pages of information. mount was a lot shorter and simpler. – John C – 2012-06-08T13:05:04.617

df gives information regarding mounted disks and their respective device locations and FS paths. You can also run cat /etc/fstab file to see if the USB drive is listed.

bedwyr

Posted 2010-06-23T14:33:06.460

Reputation: 1 185

This really is the best answer. – dotancohen – 2012-06-30T09:02:13.487

Removable media like your flash drive are usually mounted under ~/.gvfs gvfs-fuse. You should be able to format the drive in Nautilus.

If you want to use command-line tools, you'll probably have to unmount it in Nautilus and possible remount it from the command line.

Paused until further notice.

Posted 2010-06-23T14:33:06.460

Reputation: 86 075

Here is a little Perl script for Linux that lists the USB tree and checks whether and of the sd* devices is associated to an entry:

May be of some use, and also good for experimentation.

David Tonhofer

Posted 2010-06-23T14:33:06.460

Reputation: 920