A friend of mine has asked me to get a replacement (internal) tape drive for his Linux machine - ideally the same model as the one that has just failed. There are no markings on the front of the drive so how can I find out the model?

I don't know whether it is SCSI or IDE and have used my fairly limited knowledge to try and find out hardware information, for instance hwinfo does not run - I assume package has not been installed.

Not sure of Linux distribution - /proc/version gives:

linux version 2.2.14 (root@alisash) (gcc version 2.7.2.3) # 2 sat apr 29 18:58:49 pdt 2000

I can't even simply open up machine as am not onsite & was hoping to have replacement drive before calling. Also have bit between teeth now and want to know how to find this out!!

Thanks for any help.

Run the command 'lspci -v' and that will give you a good listing of all devices on the PCI bus.

If the drive is IDE it won't show up there. If you see a scsi card installed, you probably will have to lift the cover and look to see where it's plugged in. IDE bus or SCSI.

Hope this helps.

Look at the output of the console command dmesg. If linux can recognize the drive (ATAPI or SCSI) then you should be able to see a make / model. You may not be able to find a brand new drive of the same model.

You can give a try to :

#cat /proc/scsi/scsi

I use a scsi tape drive. I can see its name as /dev/st0. If yours is a scsi drive, a "ls /dev/st*" should give you its name. Then you can (assume it is /dev/st0, it probably will be if it is scsi) do a "mt -f /dev/st0 status" to get more information.