Skip to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Unraid

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

how to identify physical hard drive

Featured Replies

hello all, i recently built my first server, and i'm beginning the process of copying the data of my current pc (approx 10, 2tb drives) and then physically removing the drives from the pc and adding to the server, preclearing etc

 

my question:  i never 'labelled' the hard drives in my current pc... so when i copy the data off of one, and want to then physically move it, i don't know how i'm going to tell which drive to remove...

 

am i missing something?  when i open the pc case i just see 10 drives, and have no idea which one was just copied off of!  of course i know which drive letter it was, but i can't link this to the drive in the case

 

here's what i guess i'll do:  make a list of all current drives and drive letters.  then, shut down, remove one, then reboot.  find which one is now 'missing' then label it with a piece of tape with the drive letter.  reconnect it, then disconnect a different one, then reboot again, etc.  keep doing this until i find the one i need

 

Feels like there might be a better way?  any advice is appreciated!

You might be able to use the old "screwdriver in the ear" trick to hear which drives are spunup. Put the tip of a screwdriver on a drive and the handle in your ear. I think there is a way to make unRAID spinup or spindown individual drives from the command line. Do a search.

I have a utility - Hard Disk Sentinel - that provides lots of information about disk drives in a Windows environment, including associating drive letters with the actual serial numbers of the disk. I can't speak for the unregistered trial version that you can download here

 

http://www.hdsentinel.com/download.php

 

but I would bet that the trial version does not disable that feature. You might try it. If it works then you only need to look for the drive that has the serial number associated with a given drive letter.

UnRAID displays serial number on the Main tab.

  • Author

hi yes exactly i'm trying to identify drives in my win7 machine, not my unraid server

 

i appreciate all the feedback, will try the utilities mentioned!

 

EDIT:  crystal disc info is EXACTLY what i am looking for!  not playing favorites, its just the first that I tried and its exactly what i wanted

 

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Author

just a quick update to this post... after using crystaldisk, i later noticed it had failed to pick up two of my drives!  no idea why.  then tried HDsentinel which found them all no prob... guess i'll have to change my vote back to HD sentinel!

 

super useful program when moving a ton of drives out of a pc and into a server... hdsentinel can list the serial numbers so when you open the case you just find the drive.  worked very well for me

 

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.