[clue] Dumb disk question

[Vishal Verma]

>From `man file':

Any file that cannot be identified as having been written in any of the
character sets listed
     above is simply said to be “data”.

i.e. it is just the default output when it cannot identify anything.


On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 4:52 PM, foo7775 <foo7775 at comcast.net> wrote:

> OK, Vishal's 'blkid /dev/sdb' returned no output, so presumably it
> contains no filesystem.  *However*, the output of 'file -s /dev/sdb'
> shows the following:
>
> /dev/sdb:  data
>
> ...which is just ambiguous enough to make me wonder.  Does anyone have any
> feedback on that??
>
> Thanks again all,
>
> T.
>
>
> On 10/23/2015 4:39 PM, Dan Kulinski wrote:
>
> If you do want to see if there is a file system directly on the block
> device, try file -s /dev/sdb.  This will look for the magic number in
> common locations.  I just learned this because I knew how the file command
> worked on files and wondered if it knew about file systems.  Sure enough,
> it does!
>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 4:35 PM, Dan Kulinski <daniel at kulinski.net> wrote:
>
>> Do you know what type of file system it is supposed to be?  If there is
>> no partition table then the file system should be taking up the whole
>> device.  The way you limit the size of a file system, generally, is to
>> create a partition.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 4:30 PM, foo7775 < <foo7775 at comcast.net>
>> foo7775 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hey all, first off, I am _very_ aware that this is a painfully-basic
>>> question, but this has been a rough week, so please bear with me...
>>>
>>>   I've been searching for this info for a while now, but my very-tired
>>> brain doesn't appear to be able to format the search terms appropriately.
>>> What I'm wanting to do is to confirm that a defined disk (/dev/sdb in this
>>> case) is essentially "a raw partition" & doesn't have any data on it.  If I
>>> can confirm that, then I can create the needed partitions/filesystems &
>>> turn it over to the customer.  The 'fdisk' utility shows me this:
>>>
>>> Disk /dev/sdb: 214.7 GB, 214748364800 bytes
>>> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 26108 cylinders
>>> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>> Disk identifier: 0x00000000
>>>
>>>    Now I can tell that it doesn't contain any partitions on it (i.e.
>>> sdb1, sdb2, etc.), but I just can't seem to remember how to confirm that it
>>> isn't formatted as a single big partition.  I'd be grateful if someone
>>> could refresh my memory on this...
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> T.
>>>
>>>
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>>
>
>
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