RE: [t13] Serial # of an ATA drive

[Evans, Mark]

Title: Serial # of an ATA drive

Hello,   We tried to be very careful when we developed these words in the standard (as I recall this was back about the ATA-3 timeframe).  I don’t know about other device types, but I believe that hard drive vendors have complied with the standards in this regard since that time.  “The combination of Serial number (words (19:10)) and Model number (words (46:27)) shall be unique for a given manufacturer,” means what it says.  Since the model number string usually contains the manufacturer’s name or code, this combination is a unique value.   Regards,   Mark Evans Maxtor Corporation   -----Original Message----- From: Sridaran, Gana [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 1:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [t13] Serial # of an ATA drive   Hi folks, Can someone here tell me if the serial # string returned by the IDENTIFY DEVICE command of a drive will be unique for one particular drive ? The reason why I am asking is that the verbiage in the ATA spec 7.0 says,   6.16.17 Words (19:10): Serial number This field contains the serial number of the device. The contents of this field is an ASCII character string of twenty bytes. The device shall pad the character string with spaces (20h), if necessary, to ensure that the string is the proper length. The combination of Serial number (words (19:10)) and Model number (words (46:27)) shall be unique for a given manufacturer. Any insight on this one would be very useful. Thanks, Gana