Get Serial Number of Boot Drive and other info

Question

I am trying to get the serial number of the boot drive and I haven't figured out how to do it.

I do understand that the partition =\= hard drive but I'd like the serial of the boot partition.

This what I have so far:

        var searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_PhysicalMedia");

        int i = 0;
        foreach (ManagementObject wmi_HD in searcher.Get())
        {
            // get the hardware serial no.
            if (wmi_HD["SerialNumber"] == null)
                richTextBox1.Text += "None" + Environment.NewLine;
            else
                richTextBox1.Text += "Name: " + wmi_HD["Name"] + Environment.NewLine;
                richTextBox1.Text += "SerialNumber: " + wmi_HD["SerialNumber"] + Environment.NewLine;
                richTextBox1.Text += "MediaType: " + wmi_HD["MediaType"] + Environment.NewLine;
                richTextBox1.Text += "Removable: " + wmi_HD["Removable"] + Environment.NewLine;

            ++i;
        }

I have looked here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394346(v=vs.85).aspx#properties

To see if I could see if it was the boot drive and I don't see anything.

I'm getting nothing returned on anything but the SerialNumber, everything else is blank.

This is what I get on the above code:

Name:

SerialNumber: 5YZ01J34

MediaType:

Removable:

How do I get the serial number of the boot drive and also the information that is not showing above?

Thanks again!

Answer 1

Here you're talking about a drive (as it's bootable), not a disk. A drive is logical and represented by a letter (C, D....etc.), and a disk is physical and represented by a number (from 0 to N). In your example you used WMI and Win32_PhysicalMedia, which is wrong as this class is about disks, not drives.

Here is what you want using P/Invoke:

namespace ConsoleApplication3
{
    using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
    using System.Text;

    public class Drive
    {
        [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
        private static extern bool GetVolumeInformation(
            string rootPathName,
            StringBuilder volumeNameBuffer,
            int volumeNameSize,
            ref uint volumeSerialNumber,
            ref uint maximumComponentLength,
            ref uint fileSystemFlags,
            StringBuilder fileSystemNameBuffer,
            int nFileSystemNameSize);

        public string VolumeName { get; private set; }

        public string FileSystemName { get; private set; }

        public uint SerialNumber { get; private set; }

        public string DriveLetter { get; private set; }

        public static Drive GetDrive(string driveLetter)
        {
            const int VolumeNameSize = 255;
            const int FileSystemNameBufferSize = 255;
            StringBuilder volumeNameBuffer = new StringBuilder(VolumeNameSize);
            uint volumeSerialNumber = 0;
            uint maximumComponentLength = 0;
            uint fileSystemFeatures = 0;
            StringBuilder fileSystemNameBuffer = new StringBuilder(FileSystemNameBufferSize);

            if (GetVolumeInformation(
                string.Format("{0}:\\", driveLetter),
                volumeNameBuffer,
                VolumeNameSize,
                ref volumeSerialNumber,
                ref maximumComponentLength,
                ref fileSystemFeatures,
                fileSystemNameBuffer,
                FileSystemNameBufferSize))
            {
                return new Drive
                    {
                        DriveLetter = driveLetter,
                        FileSystemName = fileSystemNameBuffer.ToString(),
                        VolumeName = volumeNameBuffer.ToString(),
                        SerialNumber = volumeSerialNumber
                    };
            }

            // Something failed, returns null
            return null;
        }
    }
}


Drive drive = Drive.GetDrive("C");

Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Volumne name: {0}", drive.VolumeName));
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("File system name: {0}", drive.FileSystemName));
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("SerialNumber: {0:X}", drive.SerialNumber));

• If you want more information about your drive, you can use DeviceIoControl with IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY control code to get the geometry of the associated disk (bytes per cluster, sectors per track...).
• You can also get additional information (starting offset, partition number, hidden sectors...) using IOCTL_DISK_GET_PARTITION_INFO control code.

---

Now, the same using WMI:

var searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_LogicalDisk");

foreach (ManagementObject drive in searcher.Get())
{
    Console.WriteLine("-------");
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("VolumeName: {0}", drive["VolumeName"]));
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("VolumeSerialNumber: {0}", drive["VolumeSerialNumber"]));
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("MediaType: {0}", drive["MediaType"]));
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("FileSystem: {0}", drive["FileSystem"]));
}

Note I've used Win32_LogicalDisk as we're talking about drives (named here logical disks).