How to get harddrive serial number in C or asm without wmi

Question

how to get harddrive serial number(not the volume # wich change at each reinstall of windows) in C or asm, without wmi (cause wmi required admin right). Any clue would be helpfull cause right now i found nothing on web in C without wmi, in dayss of searching... Thank you. EDIT : For windows system

I think it likely that the serial number is considered confidential information, so you cannot get it without administrator privilege. — Harry Johnston
– Harry Johnston, Commented Feb 26, 2013 at 2:54
You most probably won't be able to do this without privileged instructions. — Daniel Kamil Kozar
– Daniel Kamil Kozar, Commented Feb 26, 2013 at 6:47
@ Harry : serial# is not on cpu anymore for that reason, so that's why there is a variable for it now, but hard drive too...? Anyway even if mac add can be fake, it still a relaible way of id-ing computer, thus non confidential. Thank for uncertain info : at least its info. @Daniel : ok thanks too — user2101247
– user2101247, Commented Feb 26, 2013 at 6:50
In Windows you'd have to use DeviceIoControl and issue IDENTIFY commands using ATA passthrough to the drive. You would require admin-level access — Nik Bougalis
– Nik Bougalis, Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 0:41
cause wmi required admin right - Are you sure about that? Have you tried it? Doing wmic diskdrive get name, serialnumber from a non-admin account worked correctly for me. Programmatically what you're looking for is something like this, but opening up a physical disk like that almost certainly requires admin rights. — David Wohlferd
– David Wohlferd, Commented Sep 30, 2021 at 0:46

Lynn McGuire · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-28 21:58:22Z

1

Please try my open source tool, DiskId32, which also has the source code at http://www.winsim.com/diskid32/diskid32.html . I only have an Win32 version at this time. Maybe some day I will add a Win64 version.

answered Feb 28, 2013 at 21:58

Lynn McGuire

1611 gold badge1 silver badge5 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

user2101247 Over a year ago

Wow thanks : aaalmost solved my problem. But like you said on your website : "It runs under Windows 9X, Win NT, Win 2K and Win XP (Pro/Home)." and "has occasional problems on Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server and Vista" ... So it look hard to get those hd infos : bravo for your program! Porting it to w7 would be long/hard i guess? 55% of OS are W7 now, so...(for my self i'm in the XP resistance mouvement! ;p )

Tuxdude · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-26 02:32:33Z

0

Hard drive serial number and other information about the harddrive like firmware version, etc. can only be obtained using SMART as far as I know and that requires special ioctls to the the block device node (/dev/sda or /dev/sdb) which is usually not available to a regular user.

I know there is a tool called smartctl which does exactly this:

sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda

Similar tools exist (hdparm, lshw, etc.) as well.

As far as trying to figure it out this info without being a privileged user, it might be possible only if it is exposed via /proc or /sys which I highly doubt is being done in the current SATA block device drivers.

answered Feb 26, 2013 at 2:32

Tuxdude

50k15 gold badges111 silver badges112 bronze badges

2 Comments

user2101247 Over a year ago

Im in the window$ world (wmi) for now linux-dude but thanks anyway.

Tuxdude Over a year ago

I'm not familiar with WMI, mentioning Windows explicity in the question would have made the point clearer :)

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to get harddrive serial number in C or asm without wmi

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

2 Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related