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Is there a way to find out what file system my partitions are using?

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5 Answers 5

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There are a number of ways to do this from the command line (Ctrl+Alt+t):

The command df -T will print your filesystem types, as follows: 

~$ df -T
Filesystem     Type      1K-blocks       Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      ext4      190230236  102672812  77894244  57% /
udev           devtmpfs    1021128         12   1021116   1% /dev
tmpfs          tmpfs        412884        816    412068   1% /run
none           tmpfs          5120          0      5120   0% /run/lock
none           tmpfs       1032208       2584   1029624   1% /run/shm
cgroup         tmpfs       1032208          0   1032208   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sdb1      fuseblk  1953480700 1141530424 811950276  59% /home/user/storage

This article sums up several other methods of obtaining this information.

Here are a couple of other examples that I use occasionally:

~$ mount | grep "^/dev"
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sdb1 on /home/user/storage type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)

~$ sudo file -sL /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data, UUID=b53ecdf7-5247-4d65-91a6-be9264c84dea (extents) (large files) (huge files)
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  • 6
    Note that with $ df -T filesystem called fuseblk means NTFS but $ sudo lsblk -f actually shows ntfs.
    – Mike
    Jul 24, 2015 at 15:30
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    The last one (sudo file -sL /dev/sda1) is exactly what I needed - you should put that one first.
    – AJMansfield
    Aug 27, 2015 at 16:21
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You can also use the lsblk command like this:

$ sudo lsblk -f

NAME        FSTYPE LABEL      MOUNTPOINT
sda                           
├─sda1      ntfs   OS         
├─sda2      ntfs   Data       
├─sda3                        
├─sda5      ext4              /
└─sda6      swap              [SWAP]
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  • 1
    It shows blank for several partitions. How do I see the File System byte for those?
    – BrainSlugs83
    Feb 12, 2016 at 4:21
  • 2
    sudo does not seem to be needed
    – Murmel
    Sep 13, 2017 at 8:27
  • sudo is not needed when sysfs and udev are available. -f doesn't seem to be needed either as fstype is printed by default.
    – Gringo Suave
    Mar 16, 2019 at 18:21
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A simple and good command

sudo blkid

It will list something like this:

/dev/sda1: LABEL="Windows" UUID="FA50DCB150DC763B" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: LABEL="40GBTWO" UUID="00A0CE7EA0CE7A24" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="7550252c-3da7-4cd9-8da3-71e9ba38e74a" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda7: UUID="088fd084-a011-4896-aa93-c0caaad60620" TYPE="swap"

Where /dev/sda1 is the partition, LABEL is the given name to the partition, UUID is the Unique ID of the partiton which is quite useful to mount the hardisk using /etc/fstab, and TYPE is the file system.

I often use this command to get almost all the information about my hard drive and removal drive. Hope you too like it. :)

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  • +1, good solution. Note that blkid does not need to be run as root. Also, you can give a specific partition as an argument to blkid and get info for just that partition, a la blkid /dev/sda1.
    – AJMansfield
    Aug 27, 2015 at 16:27
  • @AJMansfield You will need root privileges to get meaningful output.
    – mook765
    Sep 25, 2018 at 7:31
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In the Dash type Disk and open the disk utility application, which is called either Disk Utility in Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.10, or Disks in Ubuntu 13.04 and later.

The screenshot shows the Disks window with the 500 GB Hard Disk selected to display information about that disk. In the center pane in the Volumes section you can see that the second partition on that hard disk has been selected to display information about that partition. In the Volumes section you can also see the description Contents: Ext4 which means that the partition is formatted as Ext4 which is the default Ubuntu filesystem format.

enter image description here
Disks in Ubuntu 18.04

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  • +0 Nice that there is a GUI way of doing this, but anyone who really cares what filesystem they are using (or even knows what a "filesystem" is) is probably looking for a command line solution.
    – AJMansfield
    Aug 27, 2015 at 16:23
  • @AJMansfield +0? LOL. BTW, I care, and I strongly prefer GUI.
    – Fiksdal
    Nov 27, 2016 at 8:13
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    @AJMansfield while CLI is more robust and will work in rescue environment (initramfs), when you have very complex partitioning situation, with multiple volume groups, raid, etc. a graphical tool makes it easier to read
    – Hubert Kario
    May 5, 2018 at 11:15
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Try this in terminal: 

sudo fdisk -l

Simply copy & paste the command into your terminal.

If I understand you correctly, this should show your drives.

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  • 13
    fdisk -l doesn't show the filesystem
    – Gerald Schneider
    Jun 17, 2013 at 7:19
  • My fdisk (2.20.1 on Ubuntu 14.04) shows the FS, albeit not very specifically. "Linux" instead of ext4, etc.
    – Matthew Read
    Jun 12, 2015 at 14:53
  • @MatthewRead that is based on a numerical code which is usually, but not always, correct - almost everything ignores the code, so it doesn't have to be correct, and it might not be.
    – Robin Green
    Dec 26, 2015 at 11:40
  • +1 This is the only answer that worked for me -- nothing else would tell me if my partitions were 82, 83, or 8e.
    – BrainSlugs83
    Feb 12, 2016 at 4:24
  • Please note that while fdisk will tell you what (family) of file systems is supposed to be on a given partition, it does not check if an actual filesystem is present on any given partition. Also, for Linux that information is not even advisory, it will mount an FS irrespective of partition Id (type).
    – Hubert Kario
    May 5, 2018 at 11:19

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