Uniquely identify a hard drive

Question

I am working on a directory tree compare tool that can work across multiple computers communicating with other instances via TCP.

The tool works well but so far has been relying on drive letters and labels that can be changed by the user. Removable drives is another issue.

I want to identify each drive by some kind of unique serial number (possibly the manufacturer code). How can this be achieved with .NET?

EDIT: Please note that I am not interested in identifying uniqueness of the system on which this app is running, just the uniqueness of the hard drives installed.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5675761/serial-number-of-hard-disk-or-hard-drive — Dmitry Bychenko, Mar 06 '15 at 11:49
I would think that this is possible throug WMI but it involves a little C++. Actually, I found a wrapper for WMI: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/27480/WMI-wrapper — Icarus, Mar 06 '15 at 11:50

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '15 at 12:08

1

You may have to look for better options than the manufacturer code. Because you can have drives / partitions on the same hard disk. You could have a C: and a D: on the same drive, which means the same manufacturer code. This will result in a non-unique identification.

answered Mar 06 '15 at 12:08

Praveen Paulose

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Good point, thanks. Could simply concat drive id with the partition id or index. – Raheel Khan Mar 06 '15 at 12:42

Uniquely identify a hard drive

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