Patent ID: 8225013

Claim:
A method for generating an identifier having a specified format and uniquely associated with a storage device, the method comprising: receiving, from the storage device, an identifier associated with the storage device and having a first format which differs from the specified format; generating a data string having a predefined length from the identifier associated with the storage device and having the first format, the predefined length of the string determined from the specified format; combining additional identification data with the data string having the predefined length; generating the identifier having the specified format by reformatting the additional identification data and the data string having the predefined length according to one or more formatting parameters associated with the specified format; and storing the identifier having the specified format in a computer-readable storage medium, wherein said generating the data string comprises applying a hash function to the identifier associated with the storage device and having the first format, and wherein said applying the hash function comprises: identifying a first byte of the identifier associated with the storage device and having the first format; logically shifting the first byte by a shift amount to produce a shifted first byte; adding the shifted first byte to an accumulator value; incrementing the shift amount by a specified value to generate an incremented shift amount; identifying a second byte of the identifier; logically shifting the second byte by the incremented shift amount to produce a shifted second byte; and adding the shifted second byte to the accumulator value.