You often need to know what physical drives are attached to a system, how many drives are connected, or even what device names match up with which physical drive. Ubuntu comes with a handy tool called ‘lshw’ which is used to extract detailed information on the hardware in the PC.
To view a listing of all disks in the system:
$ sudo lshw -class disk -short
This will list all disks and storage devices. This includes DVD drives, USB card readers, etc.
Example output:
$ sudo lshw -class disk -short H/W path Device Class Description ======================================================== /0/100/7.1/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom2 disk DVD-RAM writer /0/100/10/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 250GB WDC WD2500SD-01K /0/1/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk 2TB SCSI Disk $
