3.8. Partition naming scheme
Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses a file-based naming scheme, with file names in the form of /dev/xxyN.
Device and partition names consist of the following structure:
/dev/-
Name of the directory that contains all device files. Hard disks contain partitions, thus the files representing all possible partitions are located in
/dev. xx- The first two letters of the partition name indicate the type of device that contains the partition.
y-
This letter indicates the specific device containing the partition. For example,
/dev/sdafor the first hard disk and/dev/sdbfor the second. You can use more letters in systems with more than 26 drives, for example,/dev/sdaa1. NThe final letter indicates the number to represent the partition. The first four (primary or extended) partitions are numbered
1through4. Logical partitions start at5. For example,/dev/sda3is the third primary or extended partition on the first hard disk, and/dev/sdb6is the second logical partition on the second hard disk. Drive partition numbering applies only to MBR partition tables. Note that N does not always mean partition.For disks that end with a digit,
pis added for partitions. For example, the first partition on an NVMe drivenvme0n1isnvme0n1p1.
Even if Red Hat Enterprise Linux can identify and refer to all types of disk partitions, it might not be able to read the file system and therefore access stored data on every partition type. However, in many cases, it is possible to successfully access data on a partition dedicated to another operating system.