Knowledgebase

To retrieve the serial number of your SSD, HDD, or NVMe drive, you can use the smartctl command-line tool, which is part of the smartmontools package. Below are the steps for installation and usage on RHEL-based and Ubuntu-based systems.

Steps for RHEL-based Systems (e.g., AlmaLinux)

1. Install the smartmontools package by running the following command:

   yum install smartmontools

2. Enable and start the smartd service:

   systemctl enable smartd

   systemctl start smartd

3. Retrieve the serial number of your drive using the following command (replace /dev/nvme0n1 with your actual device path):

   smartctl -i /dev/nvme0n1 | grep -i 'serial'

Steps for Ubuntu-based Systems (e.g., Ubuntu 22.04)

1. Update your package list and install the smartmontools package by running:

   sudo apt-get update

   sudo apt-get install smartmontools

2. Retrieve the serial number of your drive using the following command (replace /dev/nvme0n1 with your actual device path):

   sudo smartctl -i /dev/nvme0n1 | grep -i 'serial'

Optional: Disabling smartd Service

If the smartctl tool is no longer needed, you can disable the smartd service to save system resources. For RHEL-based systems (e.g. AlmaLinux), use the following commands:

systemctl stop smartd

systemctl disable smartd

Additional Notes

• Ensure you have the correct permissions (e.g., root access) to install packages and execute the smartctl command.
• Replace /dev/nvme0n1 with the appropriate device path for your drive. Common paths include /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1.
• To display more Disk information use the command smartctl -a /dev/nvme0n1 (replace /dev/nvme0n1 with your drive path).
• You can show a list of all hard drives by using the command lsblk or fdisk -l | grep -i 'disk'

Using these steps, you can easily retrieve the serial number of your storage drives on both RHEL-based and Ubuntu-based systems.