FreeBSD Find Out all Installed Hard Disk Information

Q. How do I find out all installed hard disk names under FreeBSD without rebooting the server? How do I use the equivalent of fdisk -l in Linux, with FreeBSD to list all hard disks?

A. The easiest way to find out detected hardware information under FreeBSD is go through /var/run/dmesg.boot file. This file is usually a snapshot of the buffer contents taken soon after file systems are mounted at startup time. It is not modified till system is rebooted. Just Linux, FreeBSD follows some sort of physical disk naming conventions:

a] IDE Hard disk names starts with ad - /dev/ad0 first IDE hard disk, /dev/ad1 second hard disk and so on

b] SCSI Hard disk names starts with da - /dev/da*

c] IDE CDROM/RW/DVD names starts with acd - /dev/acd*

d] SCSI CDROM/RW/DVD names starts with cd - /dev/cd*

List all detected hard disk / cdroms

Type the following command, enter:
# egrep 'ad[0-9]|cd[0-9]' /var/run/dmesg.boot
Output:

acd0: DVDROM  at ata0-slave UDMA33
ad4: 239372MB  at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 239372MB  at ata3-master SATA150
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad4s1a

From above output it is clear that I've following storage installed:

1. ad4 : My First hard disk connected to ATA channel 2
2. ad6: My Second hard disk connected to ATA channel 3
3. acd0 : My DVD ROM

atacontrol command

The atacontrol utility is a control program that provides the user access and control to the FreeBSD ata (IDE / SATA hard disk) subsystem.

WARNING! These examples may crash your computer and loss of data if executed improperly. Please exercise caution when using atacontrol command!

The list option can list all hard disk, enter:
# atacontrol list
Output:

ATA channel 0:
    Master:      no device present
    Slave:  acd0  ATA/ATAPI revision 7
ATA channel 1:
    Master:      no device present
    Slave:       no device present
ATA channel 2:
    Master:  ad4  Serial ATA II
    Slave:       no device present
ATA channel 3:
    Master:  ad6  Serial ATA II
    Slave:       no device present

• Tweet
• 
• 

You should follow me on twitter here or grab rss feed to keep track of new changes.

Featured Articles:

• 30 Handy Bash Shell Aliases For Linux / Unix / Mac OS X
• Top 30 Nmap Command Examples For Sys/Network Admins
• 25 PHP Security Best Practices For Sys Admins
• 20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know
• 20 Linux Server Hardening Security Tips
• Linux: 20 Iptables Examples For New SysAdmins
• Top 20 OpenSSH Server Best Security Practices
• Top 20 Nginx WebServer Best Security Practices
• 20 Examples: Make Sure Unix / Linux Configuration Files Are Free From Syntax Errors
• 15 Greatest Open Source Terminal Applications Of 2012
• My 10 UNIX Command Line Mistakes
• Top 10 Open Source Web-Based Project Management Software
• Top 5 Email Client For Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Users
• The Novice Guide To Buying A Linux Laptop