Harddisk serial number from terminal?

Question

I have multiple hard disks which get connected to my server and I'm not sure which one is what in the view of sdXY. If I could see the serial numbers of my hard disks from terminal, I could easily identify them.

Is there any way I can get the serial numbers from the terminal?

Answer 1

Another solution which does not require root privileges:

udevadm info --query=all --name=/dev/sda | grep ID_SERIAL

This is actually the library that lsblk, mentioned by don_crissti, leverages, but my version of lsblk does not include the option for printing the serial number.

See the man page of udevadm for more.

Answer 2

In terminal type:

# hdparm -I /dev/sd? | grep 'Serial\ Number'

EDIT: You can also use lshw or smartctl

• lshw

  # lshw -class disk

• smartctl

  # smartctl -i /dev/sda

If you are missing those tools, just install following packages

# apt-get install hdparm
# apt-get install smartmontools
# apt-get install lshw

Answer 3

Device¹ name and corresponding serial number:

lsblk --nodeps -o name,serial

output:

NAME SERIAL
sda  0000000012400917BA30
sdb  0000000012400917BA96

add -n if you don't want to print the header line:

lsblk --nodeps -no name,serial

output:

sda  0000000012400917BA30
sdb  0000000012400917BA96

Pass device as argument to get only the serial number of a specific device:

lsblk --nodeps -no serial /dev/sda

output:

0000000012400917BA30

---

Keep in mind lsblk lists information about all available (or the specified) block devices. Now, for those who do not know what that last term means:
In general, block devices are devices that store or hold data. Diskette drives, hard drives and CD-ROM drives are all block devices. But that's not a problem when using lsblk as you can simply add more columns e.g type (device type) and/or tran (device transport type) etc:

lsblk --nodeps -no name,serial,type,tran

sda  0000000012400917BA30     disk sata
sdb  0000000012400917BA96     disk sata
sr0  4B583242334C453233353320 rom  usb

Answer 4

By using hdparm you can see your Harddisk serial number from terminal.

Open your terminal and type as

 hdparm -I /dev/sd?|grep -E "Number|/dev"

Answer 5

$ ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/*sda*

This will show you the serial number against the familiar disk name.

Answer 6

Easiest way I know (does not require root):

inxi -Dplxx

That outputs all disks, their serials, and any extra info. -p adds partitions. -l adds labels. -u adds UUID for the partitions.

Plus it's a lot easier to remember, heh.

Sample:

inxi -Dxx
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 810.2GB (42.9% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sdc model: ST3160827AS size: 160.0GB serial: 5MT2HMH6
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD3200JD size: 320.1GB serial: WD-WCAMR1302926
           ID-3: /dev/sda model: ST380817AS size: 80.0GB serial: 4MR2EWBE
           ID-4: /dev/sdd model: ST3250824AS size: 250.1GB serial: 9ND08GKX

Note that this filters out optical drives. To see optical data:

inxi -Dxxd 
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 810.2GB (42.9% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sdc model: ST3160827AS size: 160.0GB serial: 5MT2HMH6
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD3200JD size: 320.1GB serial: WD-WCAMR1302926
           ID-3: /dev/sda model: ST380817AS size: 80.0GB serial: 4MR2EWBE
           ID-4: /dev/sdd model: ST3250824AS size: 250.1GB serial: 9ND08GKX
           Optical-1: /dev/sr0 model: LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S
           rev: KS09 dev-links: dvd,dvdrw
           Features: speed: 48x multisession: yes
           audio: yes dvd: yes rw: cd-r,cd-rw,dvd-r state: running
           Optical-2: /dev/sr1 model: LITE-ON LTR-52327S rev: QS0C dev-links: cdrom,cdrw
           Features: speed: 52x multisession: yes
           audio: yes dvd: no rw: cd-r,cd-rw state: running

Note that on my Debian system, lsblk does not show anything for serials, whether as root or user. Which is why inxi uses a much more reliable method to get that data.

lsblk --nodeps -o name,serial
NAME SERIAL
fd0  
sda  
sdb  
sdc  
sdd  
sr0  
sr1  

lsblk --version
lsblk from util-linux 2.25.2

As you can see, to lsblk, it thinks that an optical drive and floppy drive are also disks, which in a sense they are, though not really, since they don't become disks until a disk is inserted. And it shows nothing for serial, it also by the way shows nothing for other values, like label. Definitely a bug since this data is available to the system, that's where inxi gets it, direct.

Answer 7

I also like using ls -l /dev/disk/by-id because it'll show a disk's WWN if available. The WWN is usually printed on the disk's label, so it's easy to identify.

root@server (16:27:58):~# ls -l /dev/disk/by-id
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Dec 20 01:51 ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S3PZNF0JB57579N -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Dec 20 01:51 ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S3PZNF0JB57579N-part1 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Dec 20 01:51 ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S3PZNF0JB57579N-part2 -> ../../sda2
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Dec 20 01:51 wwn-0x50014ee25ffd0a5c -> ../../sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Dec 20 01:51 wwn-0x50014ee2b554c0b4 -> ../../sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Dec 20 01:51 wwn-0x5002538d427700f0 -> ../../sda

Answer 8

ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep sdX | grep wwn | awk '{print $9'}

This will show the wwn-id for the disk. The awk filter may need to be adjusted depending on the OS distribution and version. I needed a scripted solution to read the wwn-id, which is needed for Pacemaker disk fencing. If partitions (/dev/sdX1 e.g.) have already been created another grep is needed to filter the output:

ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep sdX | grep wwn | grep -v sdX1 | awk '{print $9'}

Answer 9

strings /sys/block/${dev_name}/device/vpd_pg80 | tr -d '\040\011\012\015'

Attach the 'Device Identification' VPD page (0x83) and the 'Unit Serial Number' VPD page (0x80) to a SCSI device structure. This information can be used to identify the device uniquely.

torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/scsi/scsi.c#L428

Answer 10

On FreeBSD, one could find that information in /var/run/dmesg.

On systems with ATA/SATA disks, look for ada devices:

$ grep ^ada /var/run/dmesg.boot  | grep -i serial
ada0: Serial Number WD-WMC1S5694795
ada1: Serial Number WD-WMC1S5688675

On other systems, disk devices may be found as da devices, so grep ^da .... instead.

Rather more comprehensive output can be found via diskinfo, but each disk device must be queried explicitly:

$ diskinfo -v ada0
ada0
    512             # sectorsize
    1000204886016   # mediasize in bytes (932G)
    1953525168      # mediasize in sectors
    4096            # stripesize
    0               # stripeoffset
    1938021         # Cylinders according to firmware.
    16              # Heads according to firmware.
    63              # Sectors according to firmware.
    WDC WD10EZEX-75ZF5A0    # Disk descr.
    WD-WMC1S5694795 # Disk ident.
    ahcich0         # Attachment
    id1,enc@n3061686369656d30/type@0/slot@1/elmdesc@Slot_00 # Physical path
    No              # TRIM/UNMAP support
    Unknown         # Rotation rate in RPM
    Not_Zoned       # Zone Mode

Although each disk must be named explicitly, globbing is allowed, such as diskinfo ada{0,1}.