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Is there any command or any way to know what file system is there on a medium like hard disk or CD/DVD or flash drive etc. From GUI gparted one can know the type on hard disks/pen drive but not of CD/DVD.

I ran the below command to mount my DVD.

ravbholua@ravbholua-Aspire-5315:~/Documents/Other$ sudo mount -t iso9660  /dev/cdrom ~/Downloads
mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

ravbholua@ravbholua-Aspire-5315:~/Documents/Other$

From the error thrown by mount, I feel that the file system that I had given in the command i.e. 'iso9660' may not be right. From this it strikes my mind to 1st know the f.s. present on the DVD. I'm working on Ubuntu 13.04.

Ravi
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2 Answers2

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Mounting a CD or DVD

There are 2 types of media that you'll typically see when dealing with CDs or DVDs. The type iso9660 is what is typically used for CDROMs. So mounting a CD your command would be fine.

However, when mounting a DVD, a completely different filesystem is used. It's called UDF aka. Universal Disk Format. So you'd need to change your command slightly.

$ sudo mount -t UDF /dev/dvd /mnt

I would suggest not mounting media under ~/Downloads. This will likely lead to problems if you're running a web browser. Better to mount them to a directory such as /mnt or create a completely separate directory under $HOME for the exclusive use of mounting this device.

Determining an already mounted filesystem

Incidentally, if you're interested in determining an already mounted filesystem, I think you can use the command line tool df with the -T switch to do this.

$ df -T .

excerpt from df man page

   -T, --print-type
          print file system type

Example

$ df -T .
Filesystem                        Type 1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/fedora_greeneggs-home ext4 420590200 152457112 246745212  39% /home

In the Type column it shows the type, i.e. ext4.

References

slm
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2

Try this, changing ‘/dev/cdrom’ to whatever your particular device is. /dev/sr0 (short for SCSI reader, don't ask) is a common, ‘proper’ device special for your first optical drive, but /dev/cdrom is a common symlink on Debian and friends:

sudo file -s /dev/cdrom

Unless something is very wrong with the filesystem, it should detect what it is.

You can use some deductive skills, too. Optical disks almost always have either ISO 9660 or UDF filesystems on them (they're designed for the slow-as-molasses seek times of these devices).

Also, (pessimist here), mount will print out the same message if you try to mount a thoroughly corrupted filesystem, or one on a damaged medium. dmesg will show error messages in the latter case.

Alexios
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  • I ran the command on 1 working DVD (having videos on it) and it showed the f.s. I'm having a few SONY DVDs (purchased recently from shop) which aren't getting burnt. When I ran the same command on these DVDs, it outputs "/dev/sr0: ERROR: cannot read `/dev/sr0' (Input/output error)". So, Alexios may I now presume that these DVDs are having corrupted f.s. (These DVDs may be duplicate)You may please have a look at this thread of mine that shows the error log when I tried burning these DVDs. – Ravi Dec 29 '13 at 12:01
  • you may be right when you told that mount will print the same message. Yes mount might have printed the message because of corrupted f.s. or damaged medium. Your reply is a perfect & exemplary reply to a question like this. You have touched all aspects of my query. Great & many thanks! – Ravi Dec 29 '13 at 12:31
  • @Ravi a blank DVD will not have any filesystem and cannot be mounted. Please answer my comment here and tell us if your drive can support the type of DVD you have (DVD-R). Attempting to mount it or using dd won't help. – terdon Dec 29 '13 at 12:35
  • @terdon it was in my mind to mark the answer as accepted. I intentionally didn't mark it as accepted as I wanted to wait and check so that no other possibility comes up contradicting my words. And you know terdon, as soon as I read your last but one comment, I realized that I did right by not accepting it outrightly as you only contradicted me. Rather I wasn't expecting you to say me to mark the answer as accepted as you could have realized that w.r.t. your comment its not right what I commented. – Ravi Dec 29 '13 at 12:58
  • @Ravi I just suggested that because you said this was an exemplary answer. The fact that it won't help you is because you are trying it on a blank DVD but that was not mentioned in this question :). – terdon Dec 29 '13 at 13:08