How to know what is the device corresponding to a certain external disk?

[Tom Horsley]

On Sun, 3 Jun 2012 14:04:51 +0100
Paul Smith wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> How to know what is the device corresponding to a certain external
> disk? I would like to format it and avoiding any undesirable
> formatting of other disks.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Paul

The traditional linux hacker way to be sure is to unplug the
disk, then do a "tail -f /var/log/messages" and when that
is running, plug the disk back in.

You'll see messages appear about /dev/sde (or whatever the
name is).