I noticed today that the serial number for Toshiba drives, as retrieved by smartctl(8) is not the whole serial number. I am not sure why.
I discovered this when I went to check the warranty information for a drive. The drive is fine; I just wanted to check. Using smartctl, I got this:
$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/ada5 | head smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [FreeBSD 9.1-STABLE amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-12, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 Serial Number: Z2U4W1XGS LU WWN Device Id: 5 000039 ff4c23712 Firmware Version: MX6OABB0 User Capacity: 3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB] Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Right there, on line 7, you can see the serial number. Count it. It’s 9 characters.
Now visit the Toshiba Warranty page (I listed a few such warranty links in a recent post). You’ll get told: Warranty could not be determined for this serial number.
Now click on How to find the T-S/N. The serial number on that graphic has an extra three characters. There is even a mention of Input the drives 12 digit Toshiba S/N, NO SPACES.
I just think it would be more convenient to find out the number from smartctl(8) without having to pull the drive.
Let’s see what Toshiba Support on Twitter says.
