title: EC2: EBS device id confusion (/dev/sdf vs. /dev/xvdf)
body: <p>I attached an EBS volume to my EC2 instance, turned it into a EXT3 file system, and successfully mounted it.  However, I was thrown off a little bit initially mainly due to what the AWS console said my EBS device ID was.</p>
  
  <p>According to the AWS console:</p>
  
  <pre><code>i-xxxxxxx :/dev/sdf (attached)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I took this to mean that my attached EBS device id was /dev/sdf. So when I attempted to turn  the device into a file system using this device id, I received the following error message.</p>
  
  <pre><code>ubuntu@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx:~$ mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdf
  mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
  Could not stat /dev/sdf --- No such file or directory
  The device apparently does not exist; did you specify it correctly?
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then after researching a little bit, I found <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/201091">this</a> article and then subsequently found out by running <code> cat /proc/partitions </code> that my true device id was /dev/xvdf not /dev/sdf.</p>
  
  <p>My question is why is the AWS console saying it's /dev/sdf when it's actually /dev/xvdf? I think there has to be some kind of logical explanation for this.</p>