how to identify physical hard drive

hello all, i recently built my first server, and i'm beginning the process of copying the data of my current pc (approx 10, 2tb drives) and then physically removing the drives from the pc and adding to the server, preclearing etc

my question:  i never 'labelled' the hard drives in my current pc... so when i copy the data off of one, and want to then physically move it, i don't know how i'm going to tell which drive to remove...

am i missing something?  when i open the pc case i just see 10 drives, and have no idea which one was just copied off of!  of course i know which drive letter it was, but i can't link this to the drive in the case

here's what i guess i'll do:  make a list of all current drives and drive letters.  then, shut down, remove one, then reboot.  find which one is now 'missing' then label it with a piece of tape with the drive letter.  reconnect it, then disconnect a different one, then reboot again, etc.  keep doing this until i find the one i need

Feels like there might be a better way?  any advice is appreciated!

You might be able to use the old "screwdriver in the ear" trick to hear which drives are spunup. Put the tip of a screwdriver on a drive and the handle in your ear. I think there is a way to make unRAID spinup or spindown individual drives from the command line. Do a search.

Weebo's script might help

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18954.msg169505#msg169505

I have a utility - Hard Disk Sentinel - that provides lots of information about disk drives in a Windows environment, including associating drive letters with the actual serial numbers of the disk. I can't speak for the unregistered trial version that you can download here

http://www.hdsentinel.com/download.php

but I would bet that the trial version does not disable that feature. You might try it. If it works then you only need to look for the drive that has the serial number associated with a given drive letter.

UnRAID displays serial number on the Main tab.

I think he means his drives are now in a NONE unRAID machine (windows ) and he needs to identify them.

You can use CrystalDiskInfo (freeware) that shows for each drive the serial number (also labeled on the drive physically) and the associated drive letters.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

hi yes exactly i'm trying to identify drives in my win7 machine, not my unraid server

i appreciate all the feedback, will try the utilities mentioned!

EDIT:  crystal disc info is EXACTLY what i am looking for!  not playing favorites, its just the first that I tried and its exactly what i wanted

Glad to be of assistance

just a quick update to this post... after using crystaldisk, i later noticed it had failed to pick up two of my drives!  no idea why.  then tried HDsentinel which found them all no prob... guess i'll have to change my vote back to HD sentinel!

super useful program when moving a ton of drives out of a pc and into a server... hdsentinel can list the serial numbers so when you open the case you just find the drive.  worked very well for me