How to test whether a drive uses Block level or File level storage?

[Poet129]

Is there a way to test whether a drive uses Block level or File level storage... preferably automated?

[Electronics Wizardy]

What type of drive? Normally all hdds + ssds that you use are block level storage. File level storage is things like smb shares.

[Eigenvektor]

29 minutes ago, Poet129 said:

Is there a way to test whether a drive uses Block level or File level storage... preferably automated?

Can you attach it to a virtual machine like a physical disk, put a file system on it? Then it is block storage. Can you attach it like a network drive to read/write individual files? Then it is file storage. A physical disk is block storage, but you typically put a file system on it to be able to treat it like file storage.

 

https://blog.scaleway.com/understanding-the-different-types-of-storage/

[Poet129]

This works:

from timeit import timeit
from os import remove
def allwrite():
    TestFile = open("TestFile", "wb")
    Data = b'\x00' * 512000 * 20
    TestFile.write(Data)
    TestFile.close()
def allread():
    TestFile = open("TestFile", "rb")
    Data = TestFile.read()
    TestFile.close()
def partread():
    TestFile = open("TestFile", "rb")
    Data = TestFile.read(512000)
    TestFile.close()
if __name__ == '__main__':
    a = timeit(allwrite, number=1)
    b = timeit(allread, number=1)
    c = timeit(partread, number=1)
    if (c < b):
        print("Your File System's Stucture is Block Based.")
    else:
        print("Your File System's Stucture is File Based.")
    remove("TestFile")