On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Richard Guy Briggs <rgb [ at ] tricolour [ dot ] net> wrote: <snip> > I would have done: > > for f in /dev/sd?; do fdisk -l $f; done > > which would have given you something useful. > > I agree that fdisk is of more and more limited usage these days since it can't > cope with more than 2TB. True, I actually did something similar using parted: for f in /dev/sd?; do parted -s $f print; done which lists the partition table as 'fdisk -l' does but it does so accurately for a larger number of partition table formats. But, I get your point: I should have used an option that actually produced output when the drive was there. Actually, fdisk's bigger issue is it's inability to understand GUID Partition Tables (GPTs) which are quickly becoming the norm now that MS has uefi and secure boot on vendors wishing to sell their machines with Windows 8. As I understand it, no one attempting to install linux on a machine purchased with Windows 8 will be able to use fdisk regardless of the size of the drive! Furthermore, as I understand it, there are only 2 distributions of linux that will install on a Windows 8 PC! But, that belongs to another thread ;-). regards, eds.