How To Find Hard Disk (RPM) speed

**rsaravanakumar** · 12-14-2010

How do I check my hard disk Revolutions Per Minute (RPM) speed from a Linux shell prompt without opening my server case? any other third party utility please let me know.
I referenced some other articles. they give only model number, serial number and disk space.
But i need Hard disk RPM speed using shell script.

**Rubberman** · 12-14-2010

I'm not sure you can. At least I'm not aware of any way to test for the rotational speed of a drive. I looked and so far have come up empty handed.

**Irithori** · 12-14-2010

At least it's possible to get some fodder for google:

Like this:

Code:

# find /sys/ -type f -name "model"
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/model
/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/model

#cat /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/model
HITACHI HTS54502

**rokytnji** · 12-14-2010

Like ithori says, You can run lshw as root and get the model number of hardrive and google the rpm specs.

description: ATA Disk
product: ST380815AS
vendor: Seagate

Edit. Mine is 7200 rpm
ST380815AS Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 80-GB Hard Drive | Seagate

**Rubberman** · 12-14-2010

Originally Posted by Irithori

At least it's possible to get some fodder for google:

Like this:

Code:

# find /sys/ -type f -name "model"
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/model
/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/model

#cat /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/model
HITACHI HTS54502

Yeah. Myself, I use the "open case, remove drive, read label on drive" approach. Doesn't work well with a shell script though...

**Rubberman** · 12-14-2010

Originally Posted by rokytnji

Like ithori says, You can run lshw as root and get the model number of hardrive and google the rpm specs.

Unfortunately, not all systems have that. I know that my CentOS system doesn't by default, though it seems to be available from the rpmforge repository. Hmmm. I'll install that and check it out. Thanks for the clue Roky.

**Rubberman** · 12-14-2010

BTW, does anyone know if there is a command-line means of doing a google search? That would be kewl so you could get the results of a search to use in a shell or other script.

**Irithori** · 12-14-2010

Yeah. Myself, I use the "open case, remove drive, read label on drive" approach. Doesn't work well with a shell script though...

Hmm, my machines are in dublin, I am in munich.
Let's see what my manager says if I want to travel there to look at a disc :P

More seriously:
If the disks are connected to a (decent) raidcontroller with userland tools,
it is possible to get about any information about the disks from them.

**Rubberman** · 12-14-2010

Ok. I installed and ran lshw and lshw -short. One can certainly get the make+model information that way, as well as file system info of sorts. Unfortunately, there is nothing about rotational speed and such.

**Irithori** · 12-14-2010

Another way to find the model:

Code:

# smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 5.40 2010-03-16 r3077 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     HITACHI HTS545025B9A300
Serial Number:    091028PB42041SH15Z1G
Firmware Version: PB2ZC61H
User Capacity:    250.059.350.016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 6
Local Time is:    Tue Dec 14 20:59:03 2010 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

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