How do you know whether your disk is an ssd or an hdd?
I would like to know if a disk is a solid-state drive or a hard-disk
lshw is not installed. I do yum install lshw and it says there is no package named lshw. I do not know which version of http://pkgs.repoforge.org/lshw/ is suitable for my CentOS.
I've searched the internet and there is nothing that shows how to tell if a drive is an ssd or an hdd Should i just format them first?
Result of fdisk -l .
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 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: 0x00074f7d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 14 103424 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 14 536 4194304 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 536 14594 112921600 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdc: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 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
Disk /dev/sdb: 128.0 GB, 128035676160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15566 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
Disk /dev/sdd: 480.1 GB, 480103981056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58369 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
Best Answer
Linux automatically detects SSD, and since kernel version 2.6.29, you may verify sda with.
cat /sys/block/sda/queue/rotational
You should get 1 for hard disks and 0 for a SSD.
It'll probably not work if your disk is a logical device that is emulated by hardware like raid controller
See this answer for more information about SSD partitioning, filesystem...