How to view contents of a partition?

I feel like an "absolute beginner" again by asking this, but I've found nothing clear so far. I've just successfully moved my Home folder to a separate partition to allow more space for expansion and am about to do the same on my partner's pc, where I cannot afford to screw up! So before making any changes I want to actually look into her two main linux partitions, sda5 and sda6, to double-check they contain what I think they should. I can see from using Gparted what proportion of the partitions contain data, but not what that data is. I know how to list the contents of a directory using the terminal, but with the file system being directory based, I don't know the correct commands (if such exist - but presumably they do, given linux's flexibility) to list the entire contents of an individual partition. (And if there's a GUI method as well, so much the better.)

Something like this perhaps?

Code:

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sudo mkdir -p /mnt/a5
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/a5
sudo find /mnt/a5 | less
sudo umount /mnt/a5

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Thanks for coming to my assistance, The Cog. Sorry I've not acknowledged before now - other issues came up which had to take precedence. Your code worked, but I soon realised I shouldn't have said "entire contents"! I really only needed to check what folders/directories were there. Your code produced a mammouth screed which I didn't know how to control. I ended up having to kill the process and made a mental note to take some tutorials in using the terminal! :)

Well, then replace the 3rd line (sudo find /mnt/a5 | less) with ls /mnt/a5

But if all you need is to check whether any directories and/or files are present then you can do it even without mounting the filesystem in question:

Code:

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grub-fstest /dev/sda5 ls /

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The output is similar to that of

Code:

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sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
ls -px /mnt
sudo umount /mnt

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Replace

Code:

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sudo find /mnt/a5 | less

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with

Code:

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sudo find /mnt/a5 -type -d

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Thanks schragge and cortman, that's really useful help. A little knowledge gained - many thanks.