There are different types of hard drives. The old hard drives were hard disk drives (HDD) which are still abundantly used because they are cheaper compared to other alternatives. The newer kind of hard drives are Solid State Drives (SSD) which are expensive but are a lot faster than HDD. Today we will discuss about how to detect which type of hard drive has been installed on your computer. There are quite a few ways of determining the drive type in Windows but we will go through 4 ways of doing so.
Using PowerShell (Command line)
The quickest and easiest way to determine the type of hard drive installed on your computer is using the command line. You can see the type of hard drive installed under Media Type. Determine the media type using PowerShell
Using the Windows System Information Tool
Windows System Information tool is a wonderful tool for resolving hardware conflicts as well as getting basic level of information about each component of the computer. The System Information Tool is a built in tool in Windows which is available in all versions of Windows including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.
Using Drive Optimizer (Disk Defragmentation) Tool
There is another simpler way to check whether your hard drive is HDD or SSD. You just have to open the Drive Optimizer tool in Windows which shows the disk type while listing the drives in the system. In Windows 8, the tool is called Drive Optimizer while it was called Disk Defragmentation Tool in previous versions of Windows.
Although this method is simpler, I would recommend the first method as it gives you more details about your system hard drive than the Disk Optimizer tool.
Using Third Party Tools
If you are a tech geek and come across many computers and want to see the hardware details of all the computers especially the drive types, then you should use a third party software. We have already given a list of 6 tools to check detailed information about your computer hardware. You may choose among those tools. Almost all of them will tell you some details about the hard drive.
I would recommend Speccy Portable, HWiNFO and PC Wizard for the purpose of determining the hard drive type on your computer. How do you determine the hard drive type in your computer especially if you are not a Windows user but are using Mac OS or Linux? Also see:
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