The disk is one of the most reliable things a fingerprinting system can read — but "the disk serial" actually means two different identifiers, and only one of them can be changed by software.
Two different disk identifiers
- Volume serial — a logical ID the file system assigns to a partition. It is set when the drive is formatted and is straightforward to change.
- Drive serial number — a hardware value written into the drive's firmware at the factory (read on SATA and NVMe drives through low-level identify commands). It does not change during normal use.
Anti-cheats and DRM tend to trust the firmware serial precisely because it is stable.
What can and cannot be changed
HWIDChanger changes the volume serial — the logical identifier — along with the Windows and network identifiers. That covers a meaningful part of the fingerprint for most software DRM and many game anti-cheats.
The drive's firmware serial is a different matter: it lives in the drive's own firmware and cannot be changed by ordinary software at all. Tools that claim to rewrite it work at firmware level, which is risky and vendor-specific. It is honest to know this limit up front.
Practical takeaway
For most needs, changing the volume serial — together with the Windows IDs and MAC — is enough to look like a different machine. Against systems that specifically read the firmware-level drive serial, a software change has limits that no tool removes without touching firmware.