How to get serial number from hard disks? "Mac"

Question

Is there any easy way to get the serial number of all the hard disks in a Mac using any API's?

Basically looking for a unique identifier for hard disk, with which I should make out that the Hard disk has been used(referred) by my application or not. Please let me know if there is any other solution.

Note: I need this solution in 10.4 and above.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if "AppleUSBEHCI" is the proper thing to look for but you can retrieve this sort of data using the IOKit framework:

#include <IOKit/IOKitLib.h>
#include <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>

kern_return_t   kr;
io_iterator_t   io_objects;
io_service_t    io_service;

kr = IOServiceGetMatchingServices(kIOMasterPortDefault,
            IOServiceNameMatching("AppleUSBEHCI"), &io_objects);

if(kr != KERN_SUCCESS)
    exit(1);

while((io_service= IOIteratorNext(io_objects)))
{
    kr = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties(io_service, &service_properties, kCFAllocatorDefault, kNilOptions);
    if(kr == KERN_SUCCESS)
    {
        NSDictionary * m = (NSDictionary *)service_properties;
        NSLog(@"%@", m);
        CFRelease(service_properties);
    }

    io_iterator_t   iter;
    //handle kr error
    kr = IORegistryEntryGetChildIterator(io_service, kIOServicePlane, &iter);

    io_registry_entry_t     child;
    while( (child = IOIteratorNext( iter )))
    {
        kr = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties(child, &child_props,  kCFAllocatorDefault, kNilOptions );
        NSLog(@"Child props: %@", child_props);
        //release child_props
    }

    IOObjectRelease(io_service);
}

IOObjectRelease(io_objects);

Answer 2

maybe you can just place a hidden file on a hard disk that your app has used? That's e.g. how apple's Time Machine does it.

Answer 3

Have a look at IOKit.

There are two handy tools on your Mac to find out about the possibilities of it:

• ioreg, a command line tool
• IORegistryExplorer, the same with a GUI.

Answer 4

FSGetVolumeInfo() together with kFSVolInfoDriveInfo option should give you drive information.

Answer 5

I think it's better to get the Volume UUID (which appears in the Disk Utility, for example.) UUID can be obtained using the Disk Arbitration framework, which is slightly higher-level than IOKit and easier to use. Create DADiskRef using DADiskCreateFromBSDName, and use DADiskCopyDescription to get the info dictionary, and look up the key kDADiskDescriptionMediaUUIDKey. Info on the mount point etc. can be obtained by statfs.

That said, it might be easier just to invoke the command-line utility diskutil with the option -plist to get the info in the plist format.

The sample code FSMegaInfo might also be instructive how to get much more info about a disk.