0

I have a system with Linux Mint and Windows 10 installed on it. My Windows 10 side has the boot drive on a 60gb partition of a 120gb SSD, with the data drive on a 1TB HDD (this has all my data on it). My Mint side also has the boot drive on a 60gb partition of a 120gb SSD, with the /home partition on a different 1TB HDD (the data on this one can be deleted). I need to replace Mint with Ubuntu, but I want to make sure I don't overwrite my data on Windows 10 data drive. Last time I did this I guessed and picked the wrong one and lost some files, and I don't want that to happen again. Is there a way I can differentiate between the two hard drives?

Calvin K
  • 73
  • 3
    Yes you can check the serial number of the hard drives – ARG Sep 27 '18 at 12:22
  • @ARG can I find that in GParted? – Calvin K Sep 27 '18 at 12:39
  • @calthecoder yes, you can use gparted – ARG Sep 27 '18 at 13:03
  • If you use the Something Else install option, the installer should tell you if a system is installed in some partitions. So you should see Windows and Mint. Then just choose (change button) the Mint partition, check format & ext4 and use as / (root). – oldfred Sep 27 '18 at 14:23

1 Answers1

2

Assuming your disk is smart enabled, you can get a lot of information with smartctl:

$ smartctl -i /dev/sda

If all you want is the drive's serial number, you can filter it:

$ smartctl -i /dev/sda | grep -i serial

Substitute /dev/sda by the name of your devices.

pomsky
  • 68,507
Marcelo Roberto Jimenez
  • 282