Identifying Disks on a System

Use the format utility to discover the types of disks that are connected to a system. You can also use the format utility to verify that a disk is known to the system. For information on using the format utility, see Chapter 36, The format Utility (Reference).

How to Identify the Disks on a System

1. Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.

2. Identify the disks that are recognized on the system with the format utility.

   # format

   The format utility displays a list of disks that it recognizes under AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS.

Examples—Identifying the Disks on a System

The following format output is from a system with one disk.

# format
Searching for disks...done


AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c0t0d0 <ST34321A cyl 8892 alt 2 hd 15 sec 63>
          /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@0,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 

The format output associates a disk's physical and logical device name to the disk's marketing name, which appears in angle brackets <>. See the example below. This method is an easy way to identify which logical device names represent the disks that are connected to your system. For a description of logical and physical device names, see Chapter 30, Accessing Devices (Overview).

The following example uses a wildcard to display the disks that are connected to a second controller.

# format /dev/rdsk/c2*
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. /dev/rdsk/c2t10d0s0 <SUN9.0G cyl 4924 alt 2 hd 27 sec 133>
          /sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@a,0
       1. /dev/rdsk/c2t11d0s0 <SUN9.0G cyl 4924 alt 2 hd 27 sec 133>
          /sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@b,0
       2. /dev/rdsk/c2t14d0s0 <SUN18G cyl 7506 alt 2 hd 19 sec 248>
          /sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@e,0
       3. /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0s0 <SUN18G cyl 7506 alt 2 hd 19 sec 248>
          /sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@f,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 

The following example identifies the disks on a SPARC based system.

# format
0. c0t3d0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
   /iommu@0,10000000/sbus@0,10001000/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@3,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 

The format output identifies that disk 0 (target 3) is connected to the first SCSI host adapter (espdma@...), which is connected to the first SBus device (sbus@0...). The output also associates both the physical and logical device name to the disk's marketing name, SUN2.1G.

The following example shows how to identify the disks on an x86 based system.

# format
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
  0. c0d0 <DEFAULT cyl 615 alt 2 hd 64 sec 63>
     /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@0/cmdk@0,0
  1. c0d1 <DEFAULT cyl 522 alt 2 hd 32 sec 63>
     /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@0/cmdk@1,0
  2. c1d0 <DEFAULT cyl 817 alt 2 hd 256 sec 63>
     /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@1/cmdk@0,0
Specify disk (enter its number):  

The format output identifies that disk 0 is connected to the first PCI host adapter (pci-ide@7...), which is connected to the ATA device (ata...). The format output on an x86 based system does not identify disks by their marketing names.

Where to Go From Here

Check the following table if the format utility did not recognize a disk.