Re: Unique ID of an external HDD

Hello,

Is there any unique Id of an external HDD, like the one available for Pen drives, that won't change even if formatted ? I want to restrict the usaage of windev application to be used only from a particular external HDD only. Any solution ?

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

Hello,

If it could not be done with Windev, is there any tool / ActiveX (free / paid) to read unique ID (like Manufacturer serial no ) of an external HDD ?

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

Hi, of course, it can be done with WINDEV. Look for USB functions. No time now, but I'll post an example ...

Kind regards,
Guenter Predl
office@windev.at

Hello,

Try google "wmic get disk drive serial number"

Hi, here's an example:

www.syspredl.com/datafiles/USB_Drive.zip

Kind regards,
Guenter Predl
office@windev.at

Thanks Guenter,

I already tried with USB function, but no success. It returns the serial number of pendrives, not external / internal hdd. Nevertheless I'll check with your code too.

Marijan,
Tried with wmic get disk drive serial number. It returns internal hdd's serial number, not of external one. I get an error 'invalid xml format' when I attach an external hdd. Tried with powershell, where I got a junk like character in serial number column.

Please type this in CMD:

wmic diskdrive>disk.txt

then open disk.txt in wordpad (without linewrap option)

I get all serials, internal, external, USB..., (except memory cards)

D:\>wmic diskdrive get model,serialnumber >d2.txt

D:\>TYPE D2.TXT
Model                           SerialNumber
HGST HTS725050A7E630            RC250FCB1RB88K
TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 USB Device   1310080000052162
Verbatim STORE N GO USB Device  0E7401080
SDHC Card

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2020 05:22PM by Marijan Tomasic.

Thanks Marijan

Seems the hdd (Thoshiba) that I tried is not working as expected. I tried with another external hdd (WD), it works perfectly. Not sure why it returns junk characters for the first (Thosiba) hdd.

Thanks again.

Current result

Tried with 2 hdd (Toshiba and WD).

Toshiba - returns junk in Win 7 and returns (correct) serial number in Win 10.
WD - returns (correct) serial number in both Win 7 and Win 10.

Seems there is an issue in Win 7, which was fixed in Win 10. Since Win 7 is not under active maintenance, we could not get the fix, any more, it seems.

[support.microsoft.com]

Guenter

www.syspredl.com/datafiles/USB_Drive.zip

Got a different result when tried with the above code.

Toshiba - Returned the same serial number as returned by wmic in Win 10. In Win 7, wmic returned a junk character.
WD - returned a different serial number from the one returned by wmic in both Win 7 and Win 10. wmic returned the same serial number in both win 7 and win 10.

When we get two different serial numbers, which one could be the manufacturer's serial number for WD hdd ?

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

Guenter,

www.syspredl.com/datafiles/USB_Drive.zip

The above tool is not listing connected external SSD harddisk and lists only non-ssd and pendrives in Win 10.
In Win 7 it list external ssd hdd.

Don't know why external ssd hdd doesn't appear in Win 10. Any idea ?

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

Hi sivakrith,

this small program ist just using WLanguage commands! I simply don't know why they don't work verywhere. You could compare results with a tool like Nirsoft's USBDeview https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html Btw, are you an administrator on that PC?? Being a simple user will be a problem. This one is for users too: [libusb.info]

More about devices connected to your PC: [www.techrepublic.com]

[docs.microsoft.com]

Kind regards,
Guenter Predl
office@windev.at