How do I list new drives so I can partition and format them?

Question

I added a bunch of drives to an external enclosure and attached it to a server via eSATA and now need to get them ready for software raid. However they do not appear under fdisk -l

I've tried looking in /dev/disk/by-path and /dev/disk/by-id. The RAID card appears in dmesg. Plugging and unplugging the eSATA enclosure does not cause anything to "happen" when I tail /var/log/syslog

There is a decent chance that the eSATA card I am using in the machine is faulty (I found it laying around). But before I purchase a new one I want to make sure I am not missing anything obvious.

Solution 1

Try running the command ls /dev/sd*.

This should list all drives on the system with their device names. Compare that to the output of fdisk -l which will show the current list if you don't know which are which.

Solution 2

Run parted interactively, then use the print devices command, like below:

sudo parted
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/xvda1
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print devices                                                    
/dev/xvda1 (8590MB)
/dev/xvdb (429GB)

Solution 3

In Ubuntu, the command fdisk -l doesn't return anything because it is not proceeded by sudo. Do: sudo fdisk -l and it should return information about your disks.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 128.0 GB, 128035676160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15566 cylinders, total 250069680 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1   250069679   125034839+  ee  GPT

Comments

[Jorge Castro]

server, check the tag. :)

[Jorge Castro]

It was indeed hardware but I used this to confirm, thanks!

[Blairg23]

Don't forget to sudo fdisk -l