Do I Have A SSD (Solid-State Drive) Or A HDD (Hard Disk Drive)?

Many people would like to know if they have a SSD (solid-state hard drive) or a HDD (the normal magnetic hard disk drive). The problem is, these details of whether you have a SSD or HDD are not readily available on your computer. Therefore here are a few ways you can find out whether you have a SSD or a HDD installed in your computer or laptop.

Why would you want to know if you have a SSD or a HDD? Well these drives are completely different. For one thing, a SSD drive is optimized in it’s own way. It does not like defragmentation like the older HDD does.
So do I have a SSD? Let’s see.

Look At the History Of Your Computer

A solid-state hard drive is less likely to be in an older computer or even a cheaper computer. If you have paid lots of money for a brand-new computer then I would be questioning if you have a SSD installed.
If you have just bought a second-hand computer that seems rather old, it would not be common for this computer to have a solid-state hard drive as it would have required an upgrade to have one. It would also put the price of the computer up.

Look At Your SSD or HDD Inside Your Computer

This step is not for everyone, but if you have opened a computer case before, it is usually easy and involves taking out a couple of screws. If you have a laptop, you will see a small compartment on the bottom of the laptop, again with screws (tiny ones) needing to be removed. Just remember that you should use an antistatic strap for this so you do not damage your computer components with static electricity. This is the same when you want to clean inside your computer.
When you get a glimpse of your hard drive that is in your computer, a solid-state hard drive is usually labelled as such. It is also a lot smaller than the normal magnetic hard drive. check out the picture below. It clearly shows it is a SSD. Not just that, it is only 120GB, which is tiny compared to HDD’s standards.

Google Your Hard Drives Serial Number

I guess you have heard the saying, “When in doubt, Google it”. Well that’s what I would do. First you have to find out your hard drives serial number so you can see if you have a SSD or a HDD.
1. Go down to the start menu and choose computer from the menu.
2. Right click on the C drive and another menu will appear.
3. Choose properties from the menu.
4. Go to the hardware tab.
See the screenshot below, my hard drive is listed as a model number. You can see a dvd drive and a sd card as well.

Now I will Google ST9640320AS to see what it is:
 
Oh how disappointing! I have found that my laptop has a normal Hard drive and it is only 5400RPM. Bummer!
What about my main computer?

And here are the obvious results:

Check Your Laptop Or Computer Specifications

As windows does not simply show if you have a SSD or a HDD then you are better to install third party software to give you more details with your specifications for your hardware.
Here are two free programs that will give your more details about your SSD or HDD.
http://www.piriform.com/speccy
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/SIW.shtml
I would say the absolute easiest way to find out if you have a SDD or a HDD is to google it! You do not really need to install extra software to see the answer to this problem.