How to Know If You Have an SSD or HDD Hard Drive

This article teaches you how to check if you have an SSD or HDD hard drive on either a PC or Mac desktop computer or laptop.

How Do I Know If I Have SSD or HDD Windows 10?

If you need to know whether your Windows 10 PC has a SSD or HDD for storage, there are a few different ways of finding out. Here's the quickest solution in Windows 10 to find out if your storage is SDD- or HDD-based.

1. On your Windows 10 PC, press the Windows Key + S. 

   Alternatively, click the search bar on the taskbar.

2. Type defrag.

3. Click Defragment & Optimize Drives.

4. Check what's listed under Media type for your hard drive to determine if it's a SSD/solid-state drive or HDD/hard disk drive.

How Do I Find Out What Type of Hard Drive I Have?

Another method to check what type of hard drive you have is to use the PowerShell or Command Prompt to find out. It's a little more involved but still fairly simple. Here's what to do.

1. Press Windows Key + S or click the Search Bar on the Taskbar.

2. Type PowerShell.

3. Click Windows PowerShell.

4. Type Get-PhysicalDisk | Format-Table -AutoSize

5. Look under MediaType to see what kind of hard drive your PC is using.

How Do You Check Which SSD You Have?

Another method to check your hard drive type is to use Device Manager. Here's where to look for it.

1. Press Windows Key + S or click the Search Bar on the Taskbar.

2. Type Device Manager.

3. Click Device Manager.

4. Double click Disk Drives.

5. View the hard drives listed below.

How Do I Know If I Have SSD or HDD on macOS?

Checking what type of hard drive you have on macOS is different to Windows. Here's where to look.

1. Click the Apple logo in the top left corner of the desktop.

2. Click About This Mac.

3. Click Storage.

4. Under the hard drive icon will be a description of the hard drive type such as Flash Storage which means it has an SSD installed.

What Difference Does My Hard Drive Type Make?

It might seem like there's no difference between SSD or HDD but there are some fundamental things that make each stand out. Here's a quick look at them.

• SSDs are faster. SSDs are a lot faster than conventional HDDs as they use a solid state drive method instead of spinning disks like a regular HDD. 
• HDDs can last longer. It's only possible to write to a SSD a certain amount of times. That's a large number of times for the average user running into the tens of thousands but a conventional HDD can last even longer. Whichever you choose, it's far more likely that you'll upgrade the PC a long time before this becomes an issue.
• SSDs are smaller. Thanks to NVMe technology, SSDs are typically much, much smaller than HDDs which means they're well suited to increasingly small and lightweight laptops and other devices.