Duplicate Volume ID's on the same LAN

[ConclamoLudus]

I've got a network with about 400 users. Several of the same model PC's on this network have the same Volume ID label for the hard drive, a by-product of imaging. Would this be the source of any issues in communication, or copying files? I believe it may be causing issues with License Management software in some cases. I know there is shareware available to change the Volume ID of a machine, but I'm hoping to avoid it unless its necessary. Does anyone have experience with issues like this? Any help would be greatly appreciated, I couldn't yield much info in my own searches.

 

[MtnMan]

The server name is part of the complete path to defing the volume.

 

[Nothinman]

It shouldn't cause any problems with normal things, but with licensing software who knows what they're using to uniquely identify machines. MAC addresses are popular, but I could see them using the hard disk volume ID on Windows since it's also supposed to be unique.

 

[Sianath]

You mean the volume label? That thing you can set by right-clicking a drive and going to properties? Absolutely not.

That's in no way guaranteed to be any more unique than a computer name... users can set that to whatever they want. It's not used in any form of local or network IO... it's purely for you to keep your drives separated and labeled in whatever way you think convenient.

If some software product decides to use that as a way to keep track of disks, they have some serious issues.

If you are referring to something else, please let me know, because I'm not sure what else you could mean. (disk signature? volume number?)

 

[bex0rs]

^ Volume Serial Number, ex:

C:\>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is DEAD-BEEF

Directory of C:
...

 

[bex0rs]

(btw) There is a sysinternals tool that can change it:

http://www.sysinternals.com/nt...ce/misc.shtml#volumeid

pc += 1

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the workstations in question had the contents of their HDs cloned using imaging software, I would imagine that other identifiers used internally by NT-based Windows' OS would also be clones, such as the machine SIDs, which clearly *could* cause a problem.

Google for "SIDWalker", and "SysPrep".

I'm not really sure how only a duplicate volume-id could cause problems, unless Windows' filesharing uses that data as a "volume signature" for network-shared drives, and it's interfering with proper caching/oplocks/etc.

I know that for physical local removable disks it uses that data to determine if the medium in the drive has changed, among other things.

Actually, now that I think about it, depending on the license-management product, they might well try to generate a unique fingerprint for each PC, and of the source data that they use, they could use the disk's OS-assigned volume-id data. So yes, in that case, you might want to change them, but of far greater importance is the issue of potentially-duplicate machine SIDs, which AFAIK can wreak havoc in a domain-based scenario. I'm not a domain guru, so I'll defer to the others for specifics with that scenario. You should consult with whomever managed the cloning operation, to find out if they used any tool to generate new SIDs for the resulting cloned machines.

PS. I think that MS claims that using SIDWalker is unsupported, so proceed with that tool at your own risk.

 

[Sianath]

Yeah, our stance is that if you are going to image machines, you must sysprep them first. If you choose not to sysprep the machines first, all support is best effort only and we guarantee nothing.

 

[ConclamoLudus]

Thanks for the info guys, this kind of confirms what I suspected. The machines I image do not have duplicate SIDs I use sysprep to take care of that. Its just the Volume ID label, and I believe that there is some software that does use this for license management, the one in this case is a program called MathCAD. Their license manager uses the Volume ID label to keep track of the licenses. Thanks for the link to the sysinternals tool. I'll be using that.