All operating systems offer raw access to storage devices in some way,
but the actual conventions vary widely.
The following table tries to provide a reference.
Table 1.1. Device Name Examples
| System | Floppy Drive | IDE Hard Disks | IDE CD-ROMs | SCSI Hard Disks | SCSI CD-ROMs | Partition Suffixes | Notes |
|---|
| Linux (traditional) | | | /dev/hda | | /dev/hdb | | /dev/hdc | | (fixed by location on bus) |
| | | /dev/scd0 | | /dev/scd1 | | /dev/scd2 |
| | |
| Mac OS X / Darwin | | /dev/rdisk0 | | /dev/rdisk1 | | /dev/rdisk2 |
| | |
| FreeBSD | | | | /dev/acd0 | | /dev/acd1 | | /dev/acd2 |
| | | | s1 | a | | s2 | b | | s3 | e | | s4 | f | | (DOS style) | (disklabel) |
| a) |
| Cygwin (Windows names) | | | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 | | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 | | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 |
| | \\.\E: | | (corresponding drive letter) |
| | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 | | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 | | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 |
| | \\.\E: | | (corresponding drive letter) |
| (use drive letters) | b) |
| Cygwin (POSIX names) | | | | /dev/scd0 | | /dev/scd1 | | /dev/scd2 |
| | | /dev/scd0 | | /dev/scd1 | | /dev/scd2 |
| | b) |
Notes:
a)
On FreeBSD, a BSD disklabel may be contained in a DOS partition.
In this case, the corresponding suffixes are combined. For example,
the swap partition in a BSD disklabel on the first DOS partition
would be /dev/ad0s1b.
b)
Cygwin does not distinguish IDE and SCSI drives; such details are
already taken care of by the Windows kernel.
The backslashes must be quoted when entered at a shell prompt,
e.g. disktype '\\.\C:'.
For more information on raw device access in Cygwin, see
http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/cygwin-ug-net/using-specialnames.html.