PUT_TNG

PURPOSE   OPERATION   OPTIONS   COMMAND LINES  

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Author: Dan Mares, info @ maresware . com
Portions Copyright © 2010-2019 by Mares and Company, LLC
Phone: (770)242-6687 X 119

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PURPOSE

Take user input and create "signatures" in the master boot record and the NTFS boot record of a hard drive. These signatures are up to three items which can be searched for later on.

They are:

• Today's julian date in the form Ajjj (Placed in the boot record)
• A 4 digit serial number. Representative of an arbitrary serial number assigned the drive. (In the boot record)
• A keyword string which can be searched for. (Placed in the MBR)

The program takes command line items, and forms the julian date, the drive serial number, and possibly the keyword and places it within the master boot record and NTFS boot record. These items then show up on the drive when you do a DIR. The item returned, would be similar to
Volume Serial Number is A097-1234

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OPERATION

The results of the process inserts the appropriate information (the KEYWORD string) in the master boot record at location 396, and the serial number and julian date in the NTFS boot record at location 72, which would normally be found at either the 2nd or 63rd sector, depending on how it was formatted. You then create a program, (often using linux) to interrogate the boot records, and see if the Keyword is there. If it is, the linux program can return that it is your drive and you can then mount the drive as your own. When doing a DOS, DIR command the Volume Serial Number confirms that the drive serial number, and the date of initialization is as you input. The julian date is the first 2 byte hex of the Volume serial number, and the drive number is the 2nd 2 byte value of the Volume serial number.

A sample DIR Volume Serial Number might look like:
Volume Serial Number is A097-1234
Where the A is for hex digit 10, which is year 2010
The 097 is the 97th day of the year, April 07, 2010
The 1234 is the arbitrary number assigned this disk.

This program merely sets the information in the boot records, you need an auxiliary program to read the master boot, and confirm the information is yours.

The occurance of the Keyword in the MBR can also confirm that it is "your" drive. The drive MUST be formatted to NTFS for this process to work. A non NFTS partition will cause the program to error off.

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OPTIONS

-?:  Get a help screen.

No options, but you need at least two additional items on the command line:

Item 1: drive number to operate on. Number must be between 0 and 9 (rquired)
Item 2: an arbitraty 1-4 digit serial number to brand on the drive. (optional)
Item 3: a KEYWORD to embed in the master boot record. If this item is not used, then a default of NORCROSS is used. (optional)

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COMMAND LINES

Command lines can take one of these formats:

PUT_TNG -?
PUT_TNG  0  1234  
PUT_TNG  0  1234  NORCORSS 
PUT_TNG  0  NORCORSS 

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