Firewire Disk Diagnostics
SCSI recogniton

To determine if a firewire/USB drive is connected, use cat on the file /proc/scsi/scsi, as shown in the following example: 
IDHKL39:~# cat /proc/scsi/scsi 
Attached devices:
Host: scsi6 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: Maxtor   Model: 1394 storage     Rev: v1.2
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 06

If the device is seen by the OS, it will show up here.

Filesystem Identification

To determine the filesystem type of a drive, use cfdisk. Cfdisk is a full screen console application, and gives output similar to the following for an ext3 drive (our normal format). 
IDHKL39:~# cfdisk /dev/sda
                                 cfdisk 2.12                                   
                                                                               
                             Disk Drive: /dev/sda                              
                      Size: 163928604672 bytes, 163.9 GB                       
             Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 19929              
                                                                                
    Name     Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB) 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
    sda1                Primary   Linux ext3       [H1]           163913.38 
                        Pri/Log   Free Space                           8.23 









     [Bootable] [ Delete ]  [  Help  ]  [Maximize]  [ Print  ]                 
     [  Quit  ]  [  Type  ]  [ Units  ]  [ Write  ]                             

                 Toggle bootable flag of the current partition


In the case of other file system types, like FAT32 and NTFS, output similar to the following will be shown: 
IDHKL39:~# cfdisk /dev/sda
                                  cfdisk 2.12 

			       Disk Drive: /dev/sda    
		       Size: 163928604672 bytes, 163.9 GB
             Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 19929          
                                                                              
   Name      Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB) 
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
   sda1                  Primary   NTFS             []             163921.61 










   [Bootable]  [ Delete ]  [  Help  ]  [Maximize]  [ Print  ]                 
   [  Quit  ]  [  Type  ]  [ Units  ]  [ Write  ]                             
                                                                               
               Toggle bootable flag of the current partition


We do NOT support FAT32, and cannot even read NTFS reliably, so if these are seen, either use a different drive, or reformat this drive.

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We welcome your questions and comments. Send e-mail to: SER-CATwebmaster@anl.gov