Updated June 2, 2026. Disk serial numbers are one of the most commonly checked hardware identifiers. Here's how VOIDEX protects your storage identity.
4 min read Updated June 2, 2026
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A disk serial number is assigned by the drive manufacturer and stored in the device's firmware. It is not the volume serial number Windows shows in a directory listing, and confusing the two is behind a great deal of bad advice.
Can anti-cheat read my disk serial number?
Yes, the hardware serial stored in the drive firmware, read by querying the storage controller directly. That is different from the volume serial Windows shows, which is a filesystem property and changes on format.
The volume serial is a filesystem property. It is generated when you format a partition and changes when you reformat. It is trivially readable and trivially changed, which is why anti-cheats treat it as weak evidence.
The hardware serial lives in the drive firmware and is read by querying the storage controller directly, through SCSI pass-through, ATA identify commands or NVMe identify. Formatting does not touch it. Repartitioning does not touch it. Reinstalling Windows does not touch it. Only replacing the drive does.
disk serial number The volume serial The hardware serial every attached drive
That distinction explains the most expensive mistake in this area: people wipe a drive or reinstall Windows after a hardware ban, find themselves banned again, and conclude the ban is on the account. It is not — the drive is reporting the same firmware serial it always did.
Anti-cheats read serials for every attached drive, not just the boot drive. A machine with an NVMe boot drive, a SATA SSD and a mechanical drive exposes three, and all three go into the fingerprint. This is also why replacing one drive rarely helps: the other two still match, alongside the motherboard and network adapters, as covered in what a spoofer is.
Because the serial is read from the drive rather than from Windows, spoofing has to happen between the two. That means a kernel driver, and it is the clearest example of why user-mode tools are inadequate.
HWID SPOOFER — Universal HWID protection
A user-mode tool can change what a WMI query returns. That satisfies a checker script and does nothing at all against an anti-cheat that issues a storage command directly to the controller. This is why some people report that a free spoofer showed a new serial in the interface and they were still banned — the interface was reading WMI, and the anti-cheat was not.
A kernel-mode spoofer intercepts the device control requests themselves. When something asks the controller to identify the drive, the driver returns substituted values. Because the interception sits below the point where the anti-cheat asks, the answer is consistent no matter which method it uses.
user-mode tool kernel-mode spoofer NVMe drives external and USB drives
A good implementation covers the awkward cases: NVMe drives, which use a different command set from SATA and are a common gap; external and USB drives, which are enumerated too; and RAID or storage-space configurations, where the controller may present differently from the physical drives.
It also generates plausible values. A serial that does not match the format used by that manufacturer is a signal in itself — a Samsung NVMe reporting a serial in a Western Digital format is more suspicious than an unchanged one.
This is the practical conclusion and it is worth stating plainly, because it is the most expensive misconception in this subject.
Fingerprints are composite. An anti-cheat hashing board serial, system UUID, three disk serials and four MAC addresses does not stop matching because one of those nine values changed. You have made the fingerprint slightly different, not different enough.
You have to replace every drive, not one. People buy a new boot drive and keep their game library on the old one — which is still reporting the serial that was banned, to the same anti-cheat, from the same machine.
Does changing my hard drive bypass HWID bans?
Rarely on its own. Fingerprints combine several identifiers, so one new drive still matches on the motherboard, the other drives and the network adapters. People also commonly keep the old drive in the machine, still reporting the banned serial.
The motherboard is usually the anchor. Board serial and system UUID are stable and heavily weighted. Without replacing the board, drive changes rarely move the needle.
It is not reversible. Money spent on drives is spent. A spoofer that does not work on your hardware costs you a subscription.
It does nothing about the rest. Account, email, payment method and play style are all unaffected by new storage.
The sensible order is to try a kernel-mode spoofer first, verify with the specific checks in the setup guide that every disk serial actually changed, and only consider hardware if that genuinely fails. The full cost comparison is in spoofer versus new PC, and the VOIDEX spoofer covers NVMe and SATA alongside board and network identifiers.
Can anti-cheat read my disk serial number? ▾
Does changing my hard drive bypass HWID bans? ▾
Does formatting or reinstalling Windows change my disk serial? ▾
No. The hardware serial lives in the drive firmware and is untouched by formatting, repartitioning or a Windows reinstall. Only the volume serial changes, and anti-cheats treat that as weak evidence.
Why did a free spoofer show a new serial but I was still banned? ▾
Almost certainly a user-mode tool changing what WMI reports while the anti-cheat queried the storage controller directly. Only a kernel driver intercepts the device request itself, which is why kernel-mode operation matters.
Are NVMe drives harder to spoof than SATA? ▾
They use a different command set, so a spoofer built for SATA identify commands can miss NVMe entirely. It is a common coverage gap — verify every drive's serial changed rather than assuming the boot drive represents the rest.