User:TheDragonFire123/Codename guide

This is a collated guide for finding the codename for most drives.

Western Digital[edit | edit source]

If you're lucky and the great S/N purge hasn't yet happened to your drive's S/N (basically, if the drive is new enough), the easiest way to determine a codename is to enter the S/N into the WD Warranty Check, which will provide a plethora of information, including not only the codename, but also what customer it was for.
Otherwise, you can consult Data Medics' "Identify WD Marvel Families by Code After The Dash" list, and match the letter part of the identifier code (that is, 55NCB1) to the list. Does get wonky sometimes, and I always prefer the S/N method when possible, but it's a life saver for most old ones. [1] If this list doesn't have what you're looking for, Blizzard Data Recovery also has a similar one, along with cross-references from internal model numbers to external WD hard drives.
Victoria 5.37 has some success detecting codenames... but it doesn't work a lot of the time, instead throwing some random junk name. It works best on drives made in the early 2010s.
Note that WD often have different casing and concatenating for names, for example TrailXLB being parsed as TRAIL_XLB by Victoria. I will usually prefer the Data Medics parsing if possible, but if that is not available, I will put a space where appropriate (e.g. Avalon C5 is concatenated to AVALONC5 by the Warranty Checker).

In contrast to its WD showing, Victoria 5.37 is quite perfect at detecting any Seagate F3 era hard drive, only stumbling on enterprise drives, or pre-F3 ones (Barracuda 7200.10 and earlier). Of course, this requires that you already have the drive on hand to plug it in, which... is a very major inconvenience.
Otherwise, the Blizzard DDR list is much better than the WD counterpart and also lists each family's hexadecimal family ID, which Victoria does not (for example, V11 has a hex ID of 9B). You need a serial TTL and a way to unlock the terminal for newer drives to read this otherwise, which I don't have (I do have a serial reader, but no wires small enough to plug into the TTL pins). However, do be careful as there are inaccuracies; for example, ST2000DM008-2FR102 is V11X, not Grenada. [2]

The straight most valuable list is the HiTest tool; specifically, three files located in its Program Files' uty folder; CPN_MDL.dat, which lists models, OEM part numbers and codenames but is the most incomplete. There is SN8_PRD.dat, which contains codenames mapped by a drive's first three letters of its S/N (on the label). Finally, there is MFGID_PRD.dat, which follows the same concept as SN8_PRD.dat but with the manufacturing ID instead (the front lip's left label's first three letters).
The first two letters of the firmware version, the ROM of newer HGST enterprise drives (shockingly enough; older ROMs don't have any trace of them) and the MLC code of 3.5"s from Jupiter to Aries-KP, also have hints to the codename.

These are the hardest to find of them all. Luckily, the Apple codename hint is very useful here because Toshiba codenames for 2.5" are only star signs or, in very ancient times, planets. For example, a hint of TAURS can be conclusively determined to be Taurus-S, and CAPRS is Capricorn-S.
Dell also list the codename in the list of parts in a given S/N, if you're lucky enough to find the S/N of such a computer, up until MQ01.
Until MG06, the codename was listed on Quanta's CCL lists, which list compatible hard drives with Quanta's enterprise hardware.
Note that all of these limitations mean that anything newer than the MQ02 SSHDs, DT02ACA or MG07 have unknown codenames.

Both of these put their codename on the silkscreen of the PCB, until models prior to their buyouts.
For Samsung, the stopping point was the Spinpoint F1 (Trinity). I do not know when this stopped with Maxtor.