I am trying to get the serial number (or any unique hardware identifier) of a USB drive using Python on Linux. I started with the recipe I found in this SO question .
The code in this link is great for hard drives. For example, on my internal SSD, it returns:
$ sudo python clusterTool.py / dev / sda
Hard Disk Model: SAMSUNG SSD PM810 2.5 "7mm 256GB
Serial Number: S0NUNYAB503012
rocking chair!
However, when I run it on a flash card, I get an error message from ioctl that fails without binding to the following python trace:
$ sudo python clusterTool.py / dev / sdb
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "clusterTool.py", line 21, in
buf = fcntl.ioctl (fd, HDIO_GET_IDENTITY, "" * sizeof_hd_driveid)
IOError: [Errno 22] Invalid argument
The file assumes that they are similar to each other:
$ file / dev / sd {a, b}
/ dev / sda: block special
/ dev / sdb: block special
I'm not sure how they differ, but they clearly diverge. What is the difference between these devices, and is there any way to get their identifiers evenly?
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