How do I find out what hard disks are in the system?

bash_bob

I need to know what hard disks are available, including ones that aren't mounted and possibly aren't formatted. I can't find them in dmesg or /var/log/messages (too much to scroll through). I'm hoping there's a way to use /dev or /proc to find out this information, but I don't know how. I am using Linux.

Originally asked by xenoterracide on Stack Exchange (unix) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Good Linux question — answering as the UphillTech team:

This is highly platform-dependent. Also different methods may treat edge cases differently (“fake” disks of various kinds, RAID volumes, …). On modern udev installations, there are symbolic links to storage media in subdirectories of /dev/disk , that let you look up a disk or a partition by serial number ( /dev/disk/by-id/ ), by UUID ( /dev/disk/by-uuid ), by filesystem label ( /dev/disk/by-label/ ) or by hardware connectivity ( /dev/disk/by-path/ ). Under Linux 2.6, each disk and disk-like device has an entry in /sys/block . Under Linux since the dawn of time, disks and partitions are listed...

Full answer by Gilles 'SO- stop being evil': https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/4563 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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