Device serial number

Linux and Unix-Like Linux
1

Hey!

I'm trying to figure out a sollution for a problem I have at my company with an Iomega MiniMax 500 GB USB disk.

If i run cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
I get this information:

T:  Bus=01 Lev=02 Prnt=04 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#=  5 Spd=480 MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=059b ProdID=0373 Rev= 1.00
S:  Manufacturer=Iomega
S:  Product=External HD
S:  SerialNumber=9675FFFFFFFF
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=  2mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms

We have 13 of this disks, and 2 disks which gives the exact same SerialNumber.

The problems here now, is that our operations with this disks, require us to be able to destinguish these disks by the serialnumber to identify which disk is connected where (We send an empry disc to one facility, they fill it up with data, send it back to us, we archive the data, send it to another facility, they archive the data, they send it back to us and we empty the disk and restart the process.) We need to follow the disks to know in what facility/what country it is connected and so on.

According to Iomega, they could not give us any support for this for some reason.

So, what I need to know, is there a way to either change the serial, or to "work around" it.
The exact usage of the serial is to create a one-to-one relationship between the serial and an logical name.
(In this case, the serial 9675FFFFFFFF should have a one-to-one relationship to the name "IOMEGA-USB-008").

I started to think that we maybe could work around the problem by "inventing" an own serial, like "serial+randomnumber=result | md5sum $result | awk -F '{print $1}'" (now this is not a working code, only a thought about how to work around the problem).
But I don't think this would work since it would not be possible to re-create the same self-invented serial number due to the random numbers.

So, as I have come to a total breakdown in finding out a sollution to this problem.. can any of you shed some light over my problem?

Many thanks in advance,
/Rickard

2

It's sure annoying when all USB disks of the same model have the same "unique" ID, isn't it?

Maybe you can't tell apart the disks, but how about the partitions? You used e2label to do so in your other thread, might that be applicable here?

3

I really doubt that, since aparently we need that one-to-one relation in the database. Unfortunately I do not develop the tools we are using (I'm no programmer, just a 'stupid' user). =(

Allthough, I can check with the developers, but I don't think that would work.

But what is even more annoying, is that Iomega don't support the problem. I mean, it's their product that has a problem, I think they should at least offer to change the disk.