Download Version 2 - Linux LEO

v. 3.78 The Law Enforcement and Forensic Examiner's Introduction to Linux II. Linux Disks, Partitions and the File System
Disks
Linux treats its devices as files. The special directory where these "files" are maintained is "/dev".
•
•
•
•
•
•
DEVICE:
Floppy (a:) Hard disk (master, IDE­0)
Hard disk (slave, IDE­0)
Hard disk (master, IDE­1)
1st SCSI hard disk (SATA, USB)
2nd SCSI hard disk
FILE NAME:
/dev/fd0
/dev/hda
/dev/hdb
/dev/hdc, etc.
/dev/sda
/dev/sdb, etc.
Partitions
DEVICE:
1st Hard disk (master, IDE­0)
• 1st Primary partition
• 2nd Primary partition
• 1st Logical drive (on ext’d part)
• 2nd Logical drive
nd
2 Hard disk (slave, IDE­0)
• 1st Primary partition
CDROM (ATAPI) or 3rd disk (mstr, IDE­1)
1st SCSI disk (or SATA, USB, etc.)
• 1st Primary partition
FILE NAME:
/dev/hda
/dev/hda1
/dev/hda2, etc.
/dev/hda5
/dev/hda6, etc.
/dev/hdb
/dev/hdb1, etc.
/dev/hdc
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1, etc.
The pattern described above is fairly easy to follow. If you are using a standard IDE disk (or standard ATAPI CDROM drive), it will be referred to as hdx where the "x" is replaced with an "a" if the disk is connected to the primary IDE controller as master and a "b" if the disk is connected to the primary IDE controller as a slave device. In the same way, the IDE disks (or CDROM) connected to the secondary IDE controller as master and slave will be referred to as hdc and hdd respectively. SCSI and Serial ATA (SATA) disks will be referred to as sdx. In the case of SCSI disks, they are assigned letters in the order in which they are detected. This includes USB and Firewire. For example, a primary SATA disk will be assigned sda. If you attach a USB disk or a thumb drive it will normally be detected as sdb, and so on.4 4
You may run across older distributions that support devfs which uses a different naming scheme. Don’t let this confuse you. The pattern described above is still supported through “links” for compatibility. See http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.html for more information.
Barry J. Grundy
23