How to check if my Ubuntu is placed on SSD?
Dude, where's my root?
First of all we need to know on what disk your root filesystem is located ( in other words , what device houses your Ubuntu. One way is with df.
$ df / -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 110G 58G 48G 55% /
Great ! I now know that my Ubuntu is placed onto /dev/sda disk, which is 110 GB in size ( and the other 10 GB are used for something else). Not enough info ? OK, how about this:
$ sudo lshw -short -C disk
[sudo] password for xieerqi:
H/W path Device Class Description
======================================================
/0/1/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 120GB Radeon R7
/0/2/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk 500GB TOSHIBA MQ01ABF0
Oh, Radeon R7 ! that's my SSD ! But wait . . .
What if you have two disks that are the same size and the same manufacturer?
Well, disks have this very interesting bit of information - how fast they rotate, and as we know SSD disks don't rotate.
$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep 'Rotation Rate'
[sudo] password for xieerqi:
Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Looks about right ?
Side-note: the smartmontools may need to be installed in order to use smartctl command.
For more info, read this post on Unix and Linux stackexchange site
Additional update:
There's one more method , as described here. Each drive has corresponding directory in /sys/class/block/ directory, and by doing
cat /sys/class/block/DEVICE_NAME/queue/rotational
you will get either 1 for hard drive or 0 for ssd. This approach is very convenient for usage in scripts
In fact, that's apparently the same approach that lsblk uses:
$ lsblk -o NAME,ROTA
NAME ROTA
sda 0
└─sda1 0
sdb 1
├─sdb1 1
├─sdb2 1
├─sdb3 1
├─sdb4 1
├─sdb5 1
└─sdb6 1
A simple way to tell if your OS is installed on SSD or not is to run a command from a terminal window called lsblk -o name,rota. Look at the ROTA column of the output and there you will see numbers. A 0 means no rotation speed or SSD drive. A 1 would indicate a drive with platters that rotate. My Ubuntu is installed on my /dev/sdb drive, so we can see that one indicates a 0 which means it is installed on a SSD drive. I put after this example of how to tell where your OS is installed using df.
NOTE: Ubuntu that is installed as a client in either loop or VMs will show ROTA 1 regardless of host OS installation. Also, "solid-state hybrid drives" and USB flash drives will also show ROTA 1.
Example:
terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ lsblk -o name,rota
NAME ROTA
sda 1
└─sda1 1
sdb 0
├─sdb1 0
├─sdb2 0
└─sdb5 0
sdc 1
└─sdc1 1
sdd 1
└─sdd1 1
sde 0
├─sde1 0
└─sde2 0
sdf 1
└─sdf1 1
sdg 1
└─sdg1 1
sdh 1
└─sdh1 1
sr0 1
sr1 1
Or you can do the check as a one liner script using -d to not show partitions:
lsblk -d -o name,rota | awk 'NR>1' | grep -v loop | while read CC; do dd=$(echo $CC | awk '{print $2}'); if [ ${dd} -eq 0 ]; then echo $(echo $CC | awk '{print $1}') is a SSD drive; fi; done
Example:
terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ lsblk -d -o name,rota | awk 'NR>1' | grep -v loop | while read CC; do dd=$(echo $CC | awk '{print $2}'); if [ ${dd} -eq 0 ]; then echo $(echo $CC | awk '{print $1}') is a SSD drive; fi; done
sdb is a SSD drive
sde is a SSD drive
To determine what drive your installation is on, run the command df / from a terminal window.
NOTE: Drives configured with LVM (Logical Volume Management) actually show the drive as /boot instead of /.
Examples:
LVM Drive:
df /
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/xubuntu--vg-root 243352964 106945028 123976576 47% /
df /boot
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 720368 237220 430756 36% /boot
Non-LVM Drive:
df /
/dev/sdb1 222309012 38264268 172728984 19% /
UPDATE: lsblk can also be used to show where the OS is installed and if the drive is SSD all in one command:
lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT,MODEL,ROTA
Example:
terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT,MODEL,ROTA
NAME MOUNTPOINT MODEL ROTA
sda Backup+ Desk 1
└─sda1 /media/Seagate 1
sdb WDC WD2500JD-00K 1
└─sdb1 /media/250GB_SHARE 1
sdc WDC WD5000AAKS-4 1
└─sdc1 /media/500GB 1
sdd ST500DM002-1BC14 1
└─sdd1 /media/320GB 1
sde SanDisk SDSSDA24 0
├─sde1 / 0
├─sde2 0
└─sde5 [SWAP] 0
sdf WDC WD5000AAKX-2 1
└─sdf1 /media/WD500GB 1
sdg WDC WD10EZEX-00W 1
└─sdg1 /media/1TB_SHARE 1
sdh SanDisk SDSSDA24 0
├─sdh1 0
└─sdh2 /media/Windows 0
sr0 BD-RE BH16NS40 1
sr1 DVD-RAM GH40L 1
This is after a system reboot, so my drive designations changed again, but as you can see my SanDisk drives are SSDs and ROTA shows 0.
Hope this helps!