Checking if a disk is connected but not mounted

steven19782007 · 06-16-2009, 10:44 AM

Hi all

I am looking for a way to check if a drive is plugged in but not mounted. I have a USB drive which I use as an offsite backup. I have a script which mounts the disk, does an rsync with the primary backup drive and then unmounts the drive and sends an email to the I.T department to say the backup is finished. What I want to do now is create a script that keeps checking if the drive has been unplugged and sends an email every 15 minutes or so as a reminder to disconnect the drive. I thought about checking the output of 'fdisk -l' and then using grep to check for the drive name (/dev/sdc) but was wondering if this is a sound way to do it or if there is a more specialized way to check this?

colucix · 06-16-2009, 11:00 AM

You can simply check if the directory /sys/block/sdc exists. Furthermore you can retrieve more information to uniquely identify the disk, using

Code:

udevinfo -q all -p /sys/block/sdc

GazL · 06-16-2009, 11:00 AM

Your IT Operations guys are going to love you if you send an email every 15 mins!

Anyway, maybe blkid might be worth considering.

steven19782007 · 06-16-2009, 11:13 AM

Thanks guys I think that checking /sys/block/sdc should do what I want.

It's ok, we have a small IT dept here and I am one of 4 guys who will be getting that email.

Thanks for your help

Steve