Find hard drive serial number in TimeMachine or SuperDuper backup?
Nick
For various paranoid reasons (!) I need to find the serial number of the
main hard drive in a SuperDuper or TimeMachine backup. I haven't been
able to find it by looking through logs. This is probably normally a
Good Thing but I still need it.
Does anyone know whether this is possible?
Many thanks
Nick
Chris Ridd
I'm not sure Time Machine records that. In Snow Leopard there's info in
extended attributes on Backups.backupdb/<hostname>, eg:
aluminium:FreeAgent Blue cjr$ xattr -l Backups.backupdb/aluminium/
com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress:
00000000 30 30 3A 32 35 3A 34 62 3A 39 63 3A 63 30 3A 37 |00:25:4b:9c:c0:7|
00000010 61 00 |a.|
00000012
com.apple.backupd.HostUUID:
00000000 46 33 31 31 35 31 33 39 2D 46 37 43 38 2D 35 38 |F3115139-F7C8-58|
00000010 41 30 2D 38 38 46 32 2D 36 44 33 31 34 33 36 35 |A0-88F2-6D314365|
00000020 30 35 32 44 00 |052D.|
00000025
com.apple.backupd.ModelID: MacBookPro5,1
But that looks pretty host-ish (MAC address of en0, etc), not really to
do with the disk. "diskutil" might be able to get the disk's UUID,
though I couldn't find the exact incantation. Maybe there's something
in the fsevents stuff?
I suspect you're going to be SOL with TimeMachine backups, as they
don't really care about source disks. I don't have a SuperDuper clone
to hand to see what's on it.
--
Chris
Jaimie Vandenbergh
I'm not 100% sure I'm answering the question you intend to ask, but if
you're after finding out your hard drive serial number you can get it
from System Profiler (in Applications/Utilities) if you want it. Look
under Serial-ATA.
TM/Superduper backups have no need whatsoever to care about disk
serial numbers of what they're backing up. They work by paths, either
through /Volumes/ or /dev/disk*. The data they copy likewise cares
not. If you saved a System Profile readout at some point then you
could find it in the backup, I guess.
I'm vaguely intrigued as to the purpose of your question, but I won't
pry.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected
abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor, and when was the
last time you needed one?" - Tom Cargil, C++ Journal
Fred McKenzie
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:
> I'm not 100% sure I'm answering the question you intend to ask, but if
> you're after finding out your hard drive serial number you can get it
> from System Profiler (in Applications/Utilities) if you want it. Look
> under Serial-ATA.
>
> TM/Superduper backups have no need whatsoever to care about disk
> serial numbers of what they're backing up. They work by paths, either
> through /Volumes/ or /dev/disk*. The data they copy likewise cares
> not. If you saved a System Profile readout at some point then you
> could find it in the backup, I guess.
Jamie-
I tried entering Time Machine with the System Profile screen in the
foreground, but it reverted to the desktop.
What about correlating a MAC address to the HD contained in that
machine? I understand Time Machine names the Sparse Bundle using it.
Does System Profiler read the serial number from the HD, or is it being
read from some configuration file? As you infer, the only way I can see
it being saved in the backup, is if it was in some such file.
Nick may have to look for some other identifying characteristic that is
unique to an HD, possibly "personal" and not related to the hardware.
For future use, a serial number could be used for the drive name instead
of (or in addition to) "Macintosh HD".
Fred
David Empson
> In article <u5i7g6pp9s2t4qfmj...@4ax.com>,
> Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:
>
> > I'm not 100% sure I'm answering the question you intend to ask, but if
> > you're after finding out your hard drive serial number you can get it
> > from System Profiler (in Applications/Utilities) if you want it. Look
> > under Serial-ATA.
> >
> > TM/Superduper backups have no need whatsoever to care about disk
> > serial numbers of what they're backing up. They work by paths, either
> > through /Volumes/ or /dev/disk*. The data they copy likewise cares
> > not. If you saved a System Profile readout at some point then you
> > could find it in the backup, I guess.
>
> Jamie-
>
> I tried entering Time Machine with the System Profile screen in the
> foreground, but it reverted to the desktop.
System Profiler doesn't provide a historic view of its data, because
everything it displays is generated on the spot (unless you are opening
a previously saved profile).
> What about correlating a MAC address to the HD contained in that
> machine? I understand Time Machine names the Sparse Bundle using it.
The MAC address is the hardware address assigned to the Ethernet
hardware in the computer. Nothing to do with any hard drive.
Time Machine uses the MAC address of the computer as a unique identifier
for backups, so it doesn't have to depend on details like the name of
the computer (which can be changed easily).
It also stores the UUID for each volume that is being backed up, for the
same reason (the user could rename the hard drive). The UUID is a very
big random number generated by Mac OS X when the file system is created,
which uniquely identifies that volume. It has nothing to do with the
hard drive serial number.
> Does System Profiler read the serial number from the HD, or is it being
> read from some configuration file?
Directly from the hard drive firmware. It isn't stored anywhere as a
file, unless you happened to save a copy of the system profile at some
point (while the hard drive in question was connected).
> As you infer, the only way I can see it being saved in the backup, is if
> it was in some such file.
>
> Nick may have to look for some other identifying characteristic that is
> unique to an HD, possibly "personal" and not related to the hardware.
> For future use, a serial number could be used for the drive name instead
> of (or in addition to) "Macintosh HD".
If you really need to know the serial number of a hard drive, and have
it available for reference later, use System Profiler while the drive is
in the computer, and save the profile. You can then open it later.
--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz