Command-line Knowledge Base

Check to see if data storage device is solid state or electro-mechanical

lsblk -o name,rota

If there is a 1 in the ROTA column, then the disk is a rotation electromagnetic hard drive.

$ lsblk -o name,rota
	
NAME   ROTA
sda       0
└─sda1    0
sdb       0
├─sdb1    0
├─sdb3    0
├─sdb5    0
├─sdb6    0
└─sdb7    0
sdc       1
└─sdc1    1

Nota Bene

USB memory sticks and memory cards may present thmeselves as rotational devices or even floppy drives if they have been formatted as a partionless disk.

/sys Directory

$ cat /sys/block/sdb/queue/rotational
0
$ cat /sys/block/sdc/queue/rotational
1