DONE: Find hard Drive Serial Number (HDSN)

[jdd]

Hello from newbie.  This is my first post.

Don't know if this is a reasonble request but I will ask anyways.....I would like a way to find the hard drive serial number (not the volume serial number).  Is that reasonable?

Thanks,
jdd

[Carol Haynes]

Try the drive manufacturer's website - they often have free downloadable utilities (certainly WD and Seagate do) to do this.

[jdd]

I need to fin the HDSN for any manufacturer's drive.  Can anyone help?

[Carol Haynes]

What kind of drives have you got? I would imagine that each manufacturer will store the info in different ways so it may not be possible to do this in a generic way.

If you are desparate look at the disc drive it will be printed on there.

[jdd]

I need to send an executable to a total stranger(s) with hard drive of unknown manuacturer and have them run an exectuable that will outpt a *.txt file (or something similar) that contains the HDSN.  I am not a programmer and I don't know how to do this but an explanation of the code can be found here:

http://addressof.com/blog/archive/2004/02/14/392.aspx

[Carol Haynes]

This seems to work for my drives: http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/W-P/system/hardwareinformation/article.php/c2815

It is a DOS command (open a DOS command prompt window in the folder with the .exe file and type DISKID32.EXE at the prompt).

It reports the drives on my system, except for the drives in a RAID array, but I have a RAID utility which can do that from Promise (the RAID hardware I am using).

[Carol Haynes]

I need to send an executable to a total stranger(s) with hard drive of unknown manuacturer and have them run an exectuable that will outpt a *.txt file (or something similar) that contains the HDSN.  I am not a programmer and I don't know how to do this but an explanation of the code can be found here:

http://addressof.com/blog/archive/2004/02/14/392.aspx

Yes I saw this too - you need to have Visual Basic to compile it to an EXE file. Try the other one I posted above - that has source code and a precompiled EXE file.

[Carol Haynes]

I haven't tried this solution as it requires some coding.

http://www.vb-fun.de/cgi-bin/loadframe.pl?ID=vb/komponenten/komponente0042.shtml

Unfortunately the webpage is in German but the help file is in English and tells you how to use the software. Just click the download link at the bottom of the page and then unzip the file and double click the helpfile. Look at "restributing" for info on how to register it.

Perhaps someone here could write a simple project to access the data for you (it is beyond me).

[jdd]

Thanks, Carol.  is there anyone out there that can handle this simple project to access the data?

Thanks,
jdd

[Carol Haynes]

Did you try DISKID32 ?? It does actually work. If you want to be able to email it to someone who doesn't know how to open a DOS window you could easily set up a batch file to do it for them. Something like:

DISKID32.EXE
PAUSE

would do the job.

Save the batch file into the same folder as DISKID32.EXE and then send the whole folder as a self extracting zip file which executes the batch command.

Would you like me to try and put this together for you?

Here is the output on my machine:

[Carol Haynes]

Here is a packaged solution.

Click on DiskID.zip (below). Unzip it on your system and you will find an executable file (DiskID.EXE) which when run will open a window with hard drive details displayed. Press a key to close the windows and then cancel the 'installation'.

Hope this helps.

Not the prettiest of solutions but it works well enough and only requires a couple of clicks of the mouse.

[jdd]

Yes, Carol, that would be wonderful if you could put it together.

jdd

[jdd]

That worked pretty well but is it possible to have the execution termnate itself (perhaps after a given time) and then create a *txt file on the desktop?

[Carol Haynes]

I can try ...

Let's see if this works better ...

Unpack the file to any folder you like to a single .EXE file "DiskID.EXE"

Double click this file and it will unpack DiskID.BAT and DiskID32.EXE to the same folder, automatically execute the program and produce a report called "DiskIDResults.txt" in the same folder. (The folder could simply be the desktop if you like).

[jdd]

  Awesome! 

Thank you so much.

jdd

[Carol Haynes]

You are welcome - I'll move this thread to the completed forum.