>>I know there are a couple of solutions in the files area, but is there an api call or something that would return a hard drives serial number?
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>There are API calls that will return the FORMAT-assigned Volume ID (and if you look in the entries in the Files Section, they use them), but there is no uniform method of extracting the physical serial number of a hard drive, at least not across manufacturers and drive interfaces.
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>The serial number information retrieved by the WinAPI calls is assigned to the partition, not the drive, and a new serial number is generated every time the disk is formatted. If the drive is split into multiple partitions, each partition will have a serial number associated with it, and if you reformat that partition, the number will change.
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>Many vendors embed a serial number into the drive's firmware, but the method of accessing this information is proprietary (IOW, what works on a Maxtor drive probably won't work on a Seagate drive, and in fact, may not work on other Maxtor drive models. And if you ever have a drive repaired and the electronics are changed, the serial number in firmware is almost certain to change.
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>So much for that method of copy protection...
Ed,

I was hoping for an api call that would return the soft volume (or partition) serial number. I already have a class designed to handle copy protection, but would like to add the additional clarity that the harddrive's serial number would provide.

Thanks for your response...

jd