At Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:46:01 +0200 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > Does anyone know how to determine which file system a disk was formatted > with, if fdisk -l doesn't show it? > > > > usb-storage: device found at 5 > usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning > Vendor: Model: Rev: > Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 > sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda > sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 > usb-storage: device scan complete > usb 1-4: USB disconnect, address 5 > usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6 > usb 1-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice > scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices > usb-storage: device found at 6 > usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning > Vendor: Model: Rev: > Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 > sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda > sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 > usb-storage: device scan complete > [root at HP-DL360 ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda > [root at HP-DL360 ~]# > > > > > I need to see what data is on a bunch of disks that I found in storage and > would prefer to first check if there's anything of use on them before I > format them If 'fdisk -l /dev/sda' does not show anything, either the disks were never partitioned or formatted, at least not as a bare drive. What kind of disk is this (I know it says USB above, but I am assuming these are bare disk(s) that you installed in a USB enclosure). It is *possible* these disks were part of a *hardware* RAID array, in which case only the hardware RAID would know how to deal with them (they would have some vendor-specific metadata / superblock on them somewhere). If the disks are not partitularly large (< 1TB) if they were actually in use they would likely have a MS-DOS partition table (which fdisk -l would be displaying). If they are larger disks they might have gpt partition table (parted would show this). It is possible that they have a Solaris disk label (if they were in a Solaris machine). It is *possible* that someone used them as part of a Linux software RAID array using the whole disk, in which case there might be a MD superblock on them (mdadm might see it) and it is ALSO possible that they were part of a LVM volume group, also using the whole disk as a PV, in which case there should be LVM metadata on them (lvm might see this). If none of the above, they are just 'factory fresh', never used disks. -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments