wmic diskdrive get serialnumber -> invalid xml output

Question

I want to read the name and the serial number of my hard drives.

I stumbled upon wmic but I'm having troubles. I guess these two commands should do the trick, but I only get the message:

Invalid Xml-Content. //(Translated)

wmic path win32_physicalmedia get serialnumber

or

wmic DISKDRIVE GET SerialNumber

I tried the following as well:

wmic DISKDRIVE GET SerialNumber /FORMAT:list
wmic DISKDRIVE GET SerialNumber /FORMAT:xml.xsl
wmic DISKDRIVE GET SerialNumber > c:\test.txt

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

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Solution:

Thanks JPBlanc, via the /? command I've found out that SerialNumber doesn't even exist. I now use

WMIC /output:"c:\hdds.txt" DISKDRIVE GET PNPDeviceID,Name /Format:CSV

which gives the correct result.

Answer 1

I was getting this error on Windows 7 x86 Pro (where querying the serial number should be possible) when an external drive was connected.

This is how I fixed it:

1. Get the ID of each drive: wmic diskdrive get deviceid /format:list

2. Parse the output and get the first ID. In my case this was \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0

3. Escape the backslashes so that the ID is \\\\.\\PHYSICALDRIVE0

4. Get the serial number of the drive using its escaped ID:

   wmic diskdrive where deviceid='\\\\.\\PHYSICALDRIVE0' get serialnumber /format:list

5. Repeat steps 2 - 4 until you have the serial numbers of all drives

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Edit: The above doesn't work on my copy of Windows XP x86 Pro.

This does:

wmic path win32_physicalmedia where tag='\\\\.\\PHYSICALDRIVE0' get serialnumber /format:list

Answer 2

You are just making a mistake usin WMIC command line, WMIC DISKDRIVE GET SerialNumber /Format /? gives you keywords:

CSV
HFORM
HTABLE
LIST
MOF
RAWXML
TABLE
VALUE
XML
htable-sortby
htable-sortby.xsl
texttablewsys
texttablewsys.xsl
wmiclimofformat
wmiclimofformat.xsl
wmiclitableformat
wmiclitableformat.xsl
wmiclitableformatnosys
wmiclitableformatnosys.xsl
wmiclivalueformat
wmiclivalueformat.xsl

you can try :

WMIC /output:"c:\temp\serial1.xml" DISKDRIVE GET SerialNumber /Format:RAWXML

You can replace RAWXML by one of the others formats.