Get your drive's serial number

Licensing

A full (drive-bound) Spectra MacCollect license is tied to one specific drive using three hardware identifiers: its Serial Number, Vendor ID, and Product ID. Here's how to read them from your USB SSD or hard drive and send them for licensing.

Easiest way

Method 1 — Use Drive Setup

The Spectra MacCollect Drive Setup app reads all three identifiers straight from the drive and saves them to a file for you.

Download Drive Setup and open it, then plug in the USB drive.
Select the drive on Screen 1, then continue to Screen 2 — Drive identity.
Review the Serial Number, Vendor ID, and Product ID, then click Save serial file… to save DRIVE_SERIAL_FOR_LICENSE.txt.
Email that file to info@spectramacollect.com.

Drive Setup also writes this file automatically to the EVIDENCE partition when it provisions a drive. For the full walkthrough, see the Drive Setup user guide.

Manual way

Method 2 — macOS System Information

If you'd rather read the identifiers yourself, macOS reports them in the USB section of System Information.

Plug the USB SSD or hard drive into the Mac.
From the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, then More Info, then scroll down and click System Report.
In the sidebar under Hardware, select USB.
Click your drive in the device list, then read Serial Number, Vendor ID, and Product ID in the details below.
Copy the entire details pane into a plain-text file named USB_INFO_first_last.txt and email it to info@spectramacollect.com.

Prefer the Terminal? This prints the USB device tree, including each drive's serial:

system_profiler SPUSBHostDataType

Identify your drive by name, then copy its Serial Number, Vendor ID, and Product ID.

What to expect

Eligibility & drive type

All three are required. A drive-bound license needs the Serial Number, Vendor ID, and Product ID together. If any one is missing, the enclosure can't be issued a drive-bound license — use a trial key (which runs on any drive and needs no serial) or move the disk into a different USB enclosure that reports all three.

SSD vs. hard drive. Any external USB SSD or hard drive can be licensed and used. An SSD is recommended for fieldwork — collections to a spinning USB hard drive can run noticeably slower. Drive Setup flags a drive that macOS does not report as solid-state.