The reason for this article is because a lot of us don't physically see our hard drives they are often remote in a datacenter etc and the actual serial number we see in SMART is not enough to check for some manufacturers.
A good example is our first one the Toshiba
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: TOSHIBA DT01ACA200
Serial Number: 33FMDW4AS........
The results are not bad, the Hitachi performs the same as it does in a SATA2 motherboard. However, the 2TB is much different, on a similar 2TB Toshiba I get about 198MB/s on a different motherboard vs the 2TB Hitachi which should produce similar results.
This Dell Perc 6/i is on a PCI x8 riser card and is connected to a 12-port backplane.
Adapter #0
Enclosure Device ID: 32
Slot Number: 0
Enclosure position: N/A
De........
Here's the link to the warranty checker and from there you can also create an RMA:
https://myapps.taec.toshiba.com/myapps/admin/jsp/webrma/addRequest1NoLogin.jsp
Note that the serial# shown in SMART is not complete as is the case for many other brand sof HDDs.
For example a 2TB Toshiba shows the following Serial Number in SMART:
Device Model:........