<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Tipandring:
Not real sure how NEC BSSD does thier drives but the drives both hard and Compact flash units in the Aspire, DS and I series have hidden serial numbers that are not seen by any OS other than the manufacturer.
Thats why you have to pretty much have to send these back when the hard drive fails or there is enough damage done to the flash units.
DJ</font>
I think you are right about this hidden serial number stuff. I just tried "ghosting" the image of the existing CF 64MB over to a 128MB and even a 512MB.
After booting up, both of the ghosted drives act like they are "new" and requires activating. Obviously, the hidden serial number must be in the Master Boot Record, or somehow outside of the data area that's reachable by normal dos utils.
So, so much for my experiment. If I have some more time, I will take Norton Utilities and go through the drive and see what's abnormal about this setup that comes from NEC.
I gotta be careful about this exercise though, since one wrong keystroke can render my CF useless.
Yikes!!! what a scary thought.
