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Naveen Reddy Marthala
Asked: 2020-10-07 00:13:18 +0800 CST

find more information about the drive/partition ubuntu is installed on

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I have dual booted Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop alongside Windows 10. I had made an un-allocated partition of ~270GB on my Samsung 860ev0 500GB SSD for installed Ubuntu. I have installed Ubuntu successfully, in fact i am writing this question on Firefox on Ubuntu. But, when i check it on disk management on windows, that partition i had made is still un-allocated. Here is the result of "df" command of my terminal, results of which made no sense to me whatever.

enter image description here

Will you please help me figure out if I have installed Ubuntu on that partition!. And if I have not installed it on my SSd, will you please also point me to an article that shows how to install it on unallocated partition of my SSD and not on HDD.

FYI, I also have a 1 TB Western Digital HDD(NTFS formatted) in another slot of my laptop.

EDIT 1: here is the screenshot of Gparted for my SSD. I presume this means I have installed both operating systems on my SSD. Correct me if I am wrong.

enter image description here

EDIT 2:

naveen@naveen-lap:~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0    7:0    0    55M  1 loop /snap/core18/1880
loop1    7:1    0 255.6M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/36
loop2    7:2    0  55.3M  1 loop /snap/core18/1885
loop3    7:3    0  62.1M  1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1506
loop4    7:4    0  29.9M  1 loop /snap/snapd/8542
loop5    7:5    0  49.8M  1 loop /snap/snap-store/467
loop6    7:6    0 217.9M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/60
loop7    7:7    0  30.3M  1 loop /snap/snapd/9279
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
└─sda1   8:1    0 931.5G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0   499M  0 part 
├─sdb2   8:18   0   100M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sdb3   8:19   0    16M  0 part 
├─sdb4   8:20   0 205.2G  0 part 
├─sdb5   8:21   0   844M  0 part 
└─sdb6   8:22   0 259.1G  0 part /
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
naveen@naveen-lap:~$ sudo parted -l
[sudo] password for naveen: 
Model: ATA WDC WD10JPVX-60J (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  primary  ntfs


Model: ATA Samsung SSD 860 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size    File system  Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  524MB  523MB   ntfs         Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 2      524MB   629MB  105MB   fat32        EFI system partition          boot, esp
 3      629MB   646MB  16.8MB               Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 4      646MB   221GB  220GB   ntfs         Basic data partition          msftdata
 6      221GB   499GB  278GB   ext4
 5      499GB   500GB  885MB   ntfs                                       hidden, diag


naveen@naveen-lap:~$
boot dual-boot partitioning

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Ubuntu follows the sdx# format to identify physical volumes (disks) and partitions (divisions of disks):

    • x stands in for a specific physical volume represented by a letter (a, b, c...);
    • #, is a partition of a volume x represented, in order, by number (1, 2, 3...)

    Based on the information you provided, there is a Windows installation on sdb4 and there is an Ubuntu installation on sdb6. This tells you that Windows and Ubuntu are on the same physical volume.

    Here is how I determined this:

    On this screenshot of df, it shows your root file system / mounted to /dev/sdb6. You told us that you ran these commands from your installation so that means that your Ubuntu installation is unequivocally on sdb6

    A typical Windows installation adds several partitions, so it is pretty easy to spot Windows from these outputs:

    • sdb1 is Windows' "Recovery" partition.
    • sdb2 is the EFI system partition, which is needed to boot both UEFI operating systems.
    • sdb3 is the MSR "Microsoft Reserved" partition.
    • sdb4 ?? -- clues: 200-220 GB (+/-), NTFS file system (a proprietary file system by Microsoft)
    • sdb5 is only 500MB in capacity so Windows can't be there: Windows is way too big.
    • sdb6 - we already determined is Ubuntu.

    There are no more partitions on sdb so this only leaves sdb4 which has to be your Windows installation (What Windows will call C:)

    As far as whether or not sdb is your SSD or some other device, you can usually deduce this from file sizes, and from knowing what was already on your device.

    For example: Presumably, your pre-existing Windows installation in the ballpark +/- of 200GB was already on your SSD. Since it is on sdb4, then your SSD is the physical volume sdb. Since Ubuntu is on sdb6, which is on sdb, then Ubuntu is on your SSD as well.

    You can also see the model identification as "Samsung SSD" along with the above partitions for sdb in the output of sudo parted -l.

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