How do I find out more information about block devices?

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: March 17, 2006]

You need to use blkid command to find out more information about block devices. It is a command-line utility to display block device attributes such as :
* Device name
* Its type
* Metadata

Typical entry looks as follows:
/dev/hdb5: UUID="1c255a8d-9e55-4a23-9910-54d89a6369cc" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"

To display information about all block devices simply type command (login as a root user):

# blkid

Output:

/dev/hdb5: UUID="1c255a8d-9e55-4a23-9910-54d89a6369cc" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/hdb3: LABEL="RockSolidStorage" UUID="2dc96c9a-d214-4c3c-8c8c-295aec0ac314" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/hdb1: LABEL="/" UUID="7a965fb9-bf9e-4ed5-8a01-321386b843d9" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/cdrom: LABEL="AHSAN2000" TYPE="iso9660"
/dev/hda1: LABEL="/1" UUID="25498633-a626-49b0-88dc-ac33cabec7aa" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/hdb2: TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda: UUID="f8999dde-d28f-4ae9-8d25-e9d6544e3698" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"

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