How to Find the Device Associated with a Mounted USB Drive in Linux
Solution 1
You can look at mount
, dmesg
, /proc/partitions
... There are many ways to find it.
Solution 2
df
gives information regarding mounted disks and their respective device locations and FS paths. You can also run cat /etc/fstab
file to see if the USB drive is listed.
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Cerin
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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Cerin over 1 year
How do you find the device (e.g. /dev/*) for a mounted USB drive in Linux (Ubuntu 10.04)? I'm trying to format a Cruzer USB flash drive, and when I plug it in, the icon for the mounted filesystem appears on my desktop. However, when I open GParted, it doesn't list the filesystem as an option to partition.
The recommendations I've found through Google include monitoring tail -f /var/log/messages, which they claim should list the device name when the drive is mounted, but this never happens for me. I've also read that the USB drive would usually be linked to /dev/sdb, but this appears as a broken link on my filesystem. How else would I find the device?
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Jarvin almost 14 yearsYa, dmesg will tell you the device when you plug it in... unlike the others, it'll tell you the device even before it is mounted (which it sounds like it isn't automatically being mounted to an actual directory for you). Look at dmesg right after plugging in your USB stick.
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Cerin almost 14 yearsThanks, I found that by running "mount" I get a list of all mounted devices and their file locations.
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John C about 12 years+1 for
mount
. The clonezilla docs say to usedmesg
to find the name of my usb drive, but that generates several pages of information.mount
was a lot shorter and simpler. -
dotancohen almost 12 yearsThis really is the best answer.