what is serial and how to recover it?

[Fella]

hello. can anybody explain to me what serial exactly is? i've already read the article about it on the wiki: https://wiki.multitheftauto.com/wiki/Serial but it only says what serials need for and how do they look like, but information about what is that is nowhere to be found. it's serial of what? hard drive? dvd drive? something else?

and my second question is not entirely mta related, but in the same time, i'd be happy if someone could answer that:

how to recover serial? the thing is, on our server, all the information, like playtime, cash, wins and so on is saved by serial, and thus, when 1 of our players reinstalled windows, he lost all of his data, because of the new serial he had. any solution for that? thanks in advance.

[iPrestege]

Hard Drive Serial "Yes" , "recover" ? You Mean Change it Or What -_-" ? why you want to recover it? no i don,t think that when you install a new windows the serial will change i dont think that .

[Fella]

hm, i do not quite get the idea. if it has anything to do with hard disk, then what i should be looking at is called "Volume serial number" and here the wikipedia article corresponds with mtawiki just fine, i mean wiki says:

The serial number is a 32-bit number determined by the date on the current computer at the time of a disk's formatting

and mtawiki provides just that, a number that contains of 32 bits, but wait, if it's a number, how come it has letters in it? I'm totally lost. and moreover, when i googled for "Volume serial number", in the search results all i saw was an 8 bit serial that looked like XXXX-XXXX, meanwhile, the serials that are used in mta look nothing like this.

So, yea, what are these serials? where are they from?

p.s. i've found a really old solution for my problem: https://forum.multitheftauto.com/viewtop ... ae#p281219

but idk if it works today. i might try it later, but first i need to know what is serial.