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I am wondering how to check if a directory (on my RaspberryPi) is on an external drive or not.

I think I mounted my WD MyPassport correctly, and was able to write to it via /media/pi/MyPassport. However, something happened and it created a MyPassport1 folder, which seemed to actually be the external drive. So I have /media/pi/MyPassport and /media/pi/MyPassport1 when the external is connected.

I removed my external drive and still can see (and access/read/write) to /media/pi/MyPassport...so something happened that moved the external directory, and created /media/pi/MyPassport locally.

I'd like to include in the script I have that copies data to MyPassport to first check if /media/pi/MyPassport is indeed on an external drive, before copying.

Is that possible?

Edit: I know, now, that the external drive is called .../MyPassport1, so could just see if that directory exists, then keep copying...but I'm asking more generally, is there a way to check if a directory is indeed an external drive connected via USB?

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  • What is the output of df -h /media/pi/Passport1, when USB is mounted. Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 3:16
  • @Prvt_Yadv - The filesystem is /dev/sda1. When I run that command on /media/pi/"My Passport", it's /dev/root. I have been learning about Unix and see that sda1 refers to an external drive, correct? (I know /dev/root is the root file system, aka local). Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 3:32

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That is simple, if you use the command df -h folder_name, it will show you the filesystem. e.g.

I have drives mounted in /mnt/xxx, folder, if I use command

df -h /mnt /dev/sda1 96G 81G 11G 89% /

because /dev/sda1 is mounted on / folder, and mnt, is a directory inside it.

df -h /mnt/uuid /dev/sda5 98G 57G 42G 58% /mnt/uuid

So, in your script you can use:

if [ "$(df -h /media/pi/MyPassport | grep -o /media/pi/USB)" = "/media/pi/USB" ] then echo "USB is mounted" else echo "USB is not mounted" copy.... fi

You can also reduce the if statement to:

if [ "$(df -h /media/pi/MyPassport | grep -o /media/pi/USB)" ]

As it will check the exit status.

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  • Thanks for the great detail! As I commented, the external drive filesystem is showing /dev/sda1, so am I correct in thinking that it means, explicitly that it's an external drive? (because /dev/root is explicitly the local filesystem, correct?) Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 3:34
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    @BruceWayne That is right. Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 3:34
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You can check where the device is mounted using the command 'df -h' . Then you can navigate to that folder and access the contents of that device.

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