[clue] Dumb disk question

[foo7775]

Thank you Vishal, I guess I was expecting a more-specific output. Much 
appreciated.

On 10/23/2015 5:03 PM, Vishal Verma wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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
>>         <mailto: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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