How to get the hard disk serial number using Java?

Question

How can I get the serial number of the hard disk with Java?

Answer 1

This serial number is created by the OS where formatting the drive and it's not the manufacturer serial number. It's unique, because it is created on the fly based on the current time information. AFAIK, there is no API that return that the manufacturer SN. At best, the SN of the HD firmware can be read but this will involve some very low-level API calls. Keep in mind that even if you get that number, there is no warranty that it will be unique since each manufacturer can assign the SN as they wish.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

public class DiskUtils {
  private DiskUtils() {  }

  public static String getSerialNumber(String drive) {
  String result = "";
    try {
      File file = File.createTempFile("realhowto",".vbs");
      file.deleteOnExit();
      FileWriter fw = new java.io.FileWriter(file);

      String vbs = "Set objFSO = CreateObject(\"Scripting.FileSystemObject\")\n"
                  +"Set colDrives = objFSO.Drives\n"
                  +"Set objDrive = colDrives.item(\"" + drive + "\")\n"
                  +"Wscript.Echo objDrive.SerialNumber";  // see note
      fw.write(vbs);
      fw.close();
      Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cscript //NoLogo " + file.getPath());
      BufferedReader input =
        new BufferedReader
          (new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
      String line;
      while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
         result += line;
      }
      input.close();
    }
    catch(Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return result.trim();
  }

  public static void main(String[] args){
    String sn = DiskUtils.getSerialNumber("C");
    javax.swing.JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog((java.awt.Component)
         null, sn, "Serial Number of C:",
         javax.swing.JOptionPane.DEFAULT_OPTION);
  }
}

Answer 2

Good news there is a volume:vsn attribute for the FileStore object.

for (FileStore store: FileSystems.getDefault().getFileStores()) {
     System.out.format("%-20s vsn:%s\n", store, store.getAttribute("volume:vsn"));
}

The output looks like an int (e.g. -1037833820, 194154)

Bad news it is windows specific for testing purposes as they say in WindowsFileStore jdk8u source. Might work in other platforms and in the future, or not.

Other options (JNI, executing and parsing CLI) are also system dependent. Are more ellaborate but might not suddenly break up when you change the runtime. But I think the attribute solution is much simpler and I am totally going with it until I have something better.

Answer 3

Java runs on a virtual machine which doesn't have hard drives only files and filesystems. You should be able to get this information by running the approriate command line utility from Java.

One Linux you can do

hdparm -i /dev/hda 

Answer 4

If you are using a Windows OS which is Win7 SP1 or higher, you can simply get it by executing the following cmd command in your java program, via wmic.

wmic diskdrive get serialnumber

If this command returns "Invalid XML content." you may wanna apply the hotfix file as described in here.

Answer 5

on windows machine you can use

public static String getSerialKey(Character letter) throws Exception{
        String line = null;
        String serial = null;
        Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c vol "+letter+":");
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
                new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()) );
        while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
            if(line.toLowerCase().contains("serial number")){
                String[] strings = line.split(" ");
                serial = strings[strings.length-1];
            }
        }
        in.close();
        return serial;
    }

Answer 6

1. Windows: This is a windows dependent solution using Java which invokes VBS.
2. Linux: try this c program and use JNI for Java.

Answer 7

I would imagine you'd have to implement that feature in C or C++ and use JNI to access it from Java.