Dev1 Galaxy Forum / [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

Re: [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (RC) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:58:34 +0000

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Re: [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (mweishaar) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:23:48 +0000

I know this is marked SOLVED, but you could also just unplug the drive you know you want to keep, then you'll only have 1 choice to install Devuan on.

Re: [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (RC) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:53:46 +0000

That oughtta do it
Many thanks

Re: [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (tyder) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:41:17 +0000

On boot, I can tell one from the other by it's name (one is Seagate, the other is some weird combination of letters and numbers). My current OS is installed on Seagate and I don't want to wipe it away (yet), but the other has an old version of another distro that I would replace with Devuan.
Boot order is Seagate first, then ST1234whatever. Does that mean the first boot disk is sad1 and the other - the one I want to install Devuan on - would be sda2?

If you download the live Xfce ISO and transfer it to a USB stick, you get (at least I get) an ordinary Xfce user interface on boot. If you click on the terminal icon (may be done as many times as needed), you get a terminal where you can run fdisk

sudo fdisk -l

The listing will tell you how the live Devuan has mapped the drives it has found, and it should be easy to figure out which disk to choose for install. You may post the listing and ask here, if you are not sure. Sda is the drive, sda1, sda2 etc are partitions

Here is the fdisk listing of the sda on the machine I write this (with Devuan 6.1.1 running :-))
It's an 1 TB Samsung SSD SATA disk with 'oldfashioned' MBR partitioning. Fdisk today handles both this and 'modern' GPT partitioning.

Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 870 
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xed595e8a

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *          2048   41945087   41943040    20G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2         41945088   83888127   41943040    20G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3         83888128  230688767  146800640    70G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4        230688768 1953525167 1722836400 821.5G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5        230690816 1677725695 1447034880   690G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       1677727744 1814042623  136314880    65G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7       1814044672 1953525167  139480496  66.5G 83 Linux

Re: [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (RC) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:01:21 +0000

Yikes! I've read that Peppermint uses a super-simple, newbie-friendly installer. Maybe just to be safe I'll wait for the Excalibur release of Peppermint for an effortless install.

Re: [SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (rolfie) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:54:32 +0000

Naming pattern is:

First detected drive = sda, second detected drive = sdb, ... Attention: the detection order is subject to change from boot to boot.

First partition on first disk = sda1, second partition on first disk sda2, ...

I would first look into the bios what that says, then start a gparted live medium and check that, then only use manual partitioning (requires some understanding).

For a newbie: read very carefuly the displays you are getting to relate physical disk with display by software.

[SOLVED] Two HDDs: Which is sda1?

dummy@example.com (RC) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:41:23 +0000

Hi,

First post, first time trying Devuan! I got all the way up to choosing where to install Devuan (giving it the entire drive) when it offered me a choice between sda1, sda2 and a couple of others.

On boot, I can tell one from the other by it's name (one is Seagate, the other is some weird combination of letters and numbers). My current OS is installed on Seagate and I don't want to wipe it away (yet), but the other has an old version of another distro that I would replace with Devuan.

Boot order is Seagate first, then ST1234whatever. Does that mean the first boot disk is sad1 and the other - the one I want to install Devuan on - would be sda2?

Thanks, sorry for the rookie question. I did do a search before asking.