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

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