Disks plugged into USB don't show serial number, while direct SATA/IDE/SCSI do.

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Update! USB serial numbers are now supported for specific USB to IDE/SATA adapters chipsets. See #230 and following comments for adapters that support this feature. If you have a USB to IDE/SATA adapter that shows the serial number in nwipe please feel free to post a comment with details and a photo of the adapter. Thanks.

Original comment:
This is because we need to use a slightly different method of acquiring the serial number for a USB disk as opposed to a SATA/IDE disc.

Self assigned as I've been looking at this issue. As always, anybody that has any knowledge of accessing disk info using IOCTL via the USB bus is more than welcome to comment with suggestions.

[infrastation]

It is possible to read the serial number from sysfs if you know how to map the block device name to corresponding entry in sysfs (follow a symlink from elsewhere?), for example, I have just tested with a USB HDD and it appeared as:

(lsscsi --generic)
Host: scsi7 Channel: 00 Target: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: ADATA    Model: HD720            Rev: 9201
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 06

(lsusb -v)
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 125f:a51a A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd. 

$ cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.1/manufacturer 
ADATA
$ cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.1/product 
HD720
$ cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.1/serial 

Maybe that would be easier than a pure-C solution.

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I'm currently working on the code for this, however whether the serial number can be accessed has a lot to do with the chipset used in the USB to IDE/SATA adapter that you are using. Many do not support SAT ATA pass through. The three USB adapters I have don't support it. So I'm on the hunt for a suitable USB to IDE/SATA adapter that supports ATA pass through.

Chipsets that support this include:
ASMedia, Initio, Oxford, newer JMicron-JM20329, JM20335-39, Prolific PL2507/3507 PL2571/2771/2773/2775 ,Sunplus SPIF215/6, SPIF225/6.
Jmicron, Prolific and Sunplus supports fully ATA pass-through.

Further information can be found here:
https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/USB

Getting the serial number of a drive via USB looks like it's going to be a challenge ! However I'll persevere and see if it gets me anywhere. First things first, means getting the right hardware that supports ATA pass through.

Just for reference most of the USB to IDE/SATA adapters will only return vendor/manufacturer/model info about the adapter itself not the drive you are plugging into it.

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I've dug a bit deeper and found a supported USB bridge in my pile of USB to IDE/SATA adapters. A model RXD-338U3.