On a laptop it can stand like HDD(HDD) and solid state drive (SSD). These are two devices with fundamentally different approaches to storing information, so if you, for example, decide to upgrade a laptop, then you need to find out what type of disk is used in this moment. For convenience, we will simply call both types of media disks.

Physical examination

If the hard drive has failed and you want to remove it or are simply not afraid to disassemble the laptop, then you can find out the type of media as a result of a physical inspection. But first you need to get to the disk:

The hard drive is mounted inside the laptop on a special slide. Unscrew them and carefully remove the device from the case. Now you can find out the model, volume, speed and other important parameters.

Using Monitoring Utilities

At the physical examination hard drive there are two serious disadvantages:

1. You have to disassemble the laptop just to find out which drive is installed and see its model.
2. The disk casing may not contain the necessary information.

To resolve these shortcomings, use the software method of viewing hard drive information. It consists of using Windows tools or special utilities to monitor your computer. For example, to find out the size of your hard drive, just go to “My Computer” and add together the volumes of partitions C and D. You can also find out the full size using the “Disk Management” utility.

If you want to find out the exact model of the drive, then in the same “Management” window, go to the “Device Manager” tab. Open the “Disk devices” section and you will see the names of the connected media.

If you want to know everything technical specifications disk, up to the number of heads, file system and firmware version, then use computer monitoring utilities - Speccy or AIDA64.

In Speccy ( free program) the necessary information is located on the “Data storage” tab. Among other things, it shows the current temperature of the disk and its general condition.

A comparable amount of disk data can be found in the Data Storage section of AIDA64. By selecting the subsection with the name of the interface that is used to connect the media, you will receive a complete specification of the disk.

What types of discs are there?

When you find information about the disk, you will have to interpret it somehow, because for an unprepared person all these meanings and terms do not make any sense. Therefore, let's first figure out what types of drives for laptops there are:

• SSD (solid state drive) is a new type of storage device that uses memory chips, which makes it look like a regular flash drive. Does not make noise, does not heat up, does not vibrate, consumes little energy, demonstrates high speed reading and writing.
• HDD (hard disk, hard disk) is an outdated type of media that uses an electronic-mechanical operating principle. It is equipped with a head that reads data from magnetic disks, so the read and write speed is significantly lower than that of an SSD.

HDD is noisy, hot, vibrates and consumes more power than SSD. The only advantage is the low cost compared to a solid-state drive. But SSD is gradually pushing HDD out of the market, so soon no one will remember about hard drives.

In addition to types and capacity, you need to know a few more important information about disks. For example, operating mode:

• SATA 150 - practically not used in modern laptops, bandwidth does not exceed 1.5 Gb/s.
• SATA 300 – operating mode with throughput 300 Gb/s.
• SATA 600 – operating mode with a bandwidth of 600 Gb/s.

It is preferable to buy drives that support SATA III mode (SATA 600). The difference in performance between SATA II and SATA III can reach 1.5-2 times, this is noticeable to the naked eye when loading the system and performing other tasks.

But if the laptop motherboard only supports the SATA II interface, then there is no point in installing an SSD with SATA III, because it will not be more than 300 Gb/s anyway. It's important to keep hardware compatibility in mind, otherwise you could end up wasting money on a device that has limited functionality.

How to find out what hard drive is on your computer

In most cases, the average person may need information about disk drive “C” when there are obvious problems with the operating system or there is a question about the need to replace it with a more capacious one. It is situations like these that force most users to look for an answer to the question of how to find out which hard drive is on the computer. In other cases, such a need does not arise. There is no particular difficulty here, and every user can easily do this if they know the order of performing simple actions.

What is a hard drive and what types does it come in?

The hard drive also has other names among users - hard drive, Hard Disk Drive or abbreviated HDD, screw. This is the name given to the part of the computer system unit that performs the functions of recording and rewriting information.
It is he who stores absolutely all the information, and file data of the operating system is no exception. If you install a program, then all information is saved on the hard drive, the same happens if files are written or copied on the computer.

HDD can be presented in two versions: external and built-in.
1. An external (portable or portable) hard drive is a removable structure that is hidden in special block, for ease of transfer. They have different memory capacities and connection interfaces (USB 3.0 or 2.0).
2. The built-in (internal) hard drive is located directly in the operating unit of a personal computer or laptop. They differ in size: for a PC - 3.5 inches, and for a laptop - 2.5 inches.

All incoming information is generated on special magnetic disk drives; if you open the lid, it is clearly visible. But this kind of hard drive is gradually becoming a thing of the past, being replaced by a board. It is more functional and less susceptible to external damage, since it does not contain moving parts. In addition, they provide faster and quieter operation of the operating system. But the cost of such rigid boards is many times higher than magnetic ones.

How can I find out information about the hard drive on my computer?

For many users, it remains a mystery what kind of hard drive is on their computer. Yes, in fact, they don’t need to have this information. And if there are problems with the operating system, which in most cases indicates incorrect operation namely the hard drive, then the diagnostics are carried out by specialists. But there are often cases when, when talking about problems that have arisen, technicians are interested in this particular indicator of your PC. Diagnosing a Hard Disk Drive itself takes a lot of time, so such repairs can be done quickly and cannot be done at home.

So how to look at the hard drive on a computer? There are several options for obtaining this information. The easiest way to find out this data, which can be used on any computer, even a non-working one, is to remove the hard drive from the case of the system unit or laptop and get acquainted with the data that interests us. To do this, you need to turn off the power (remove the battery from the laptop), unscrew the (bottom) cover and take out the same hard drive.

If the computer can be turned on, then complete information about the installed hard drive can be obtained by using programs. But for each parameter you need to perform your own set of actions.

So, to find out the volume of the Hard Disk Drive available on your computer, you need to right click mouse click on the desktop icon or the “Start” panel “My Computer”. In the window that opens, select “Computer Management”. In the additional utility that opens, find and click on “Storage Devices”, the next step is to click “Disk Management”. The window will show the true amount of memory that your PC or laptop has on the hard drive. It will be designated as “Disk 0”. For convenience, manufacturers and users use numbers rounded to the nearest thousand when denoting this indicator. So, a volume of 40Gb corresponds to a real figure of 37.25 Gb, 60Gb – 55.88 Gb, 500 Gb – 465.65 Gb, etc.

Next to the available information about the amount of memory, there may be two more small windows. This means that your hard drive is divided into two or three logical volumes, where one, usually called “C”, will serve as the operating system storage, and the second “D” accumulates all the information saved by the user.

To find out which model hard drive“C” needs to perform such actions. We start with the same double click on the “My Computer” icon. Select "Computer Management". In the menu that opens, you need to find the “Device Manager” shortcut. In order to view the installed disk drives, you need to activate the “Disk devices” item. Complete information about the installed hard drives on your PC or laptop will open.

Special programs for testing hard drives

You can also find out which hard drive is installed on your personal computer or laptop using special programs. Some of these are the following:
EVEREST;
AIDA64;
HDD Scan.

This kind of program is designed not only to find out the brand and volume of the Hard Disk Drive, but also to scan it, find damaged sectors, assess the general condition of any drive, determine the maximum heating temperature, and battery consumption.

In order to check your hard drive, you need to download the program and run it on your PC. A menu usually appears in the window where we find and activate “Data Storage”; the utility opens a complete list of all storage devices on this PC: actual and logical, optical drives, Windows storage, etc. We are interested in the icon called “ATA” By clicking on which in the main window, full information about the hard drive opens: from the model to the search time indicators.

These are the main search paths necessary information about the installed Hard Disk Drive on your PC or laptop.

There are few cases when you need to find out the model of your hard drive. Most often, a similar question is asked when the hard drive has died for a long time - errors appear during operation, or the OS does not boot at all due to a non-working disk. It happens that you need to identify your HDD in order to replace it with a more capacious one, or this information is simply interesting for you.

In any case, problems with the hard drive are those that can be fixed in workshops, since computer repair at home is advisable only when the problem can be fixed quickly and efficiently. Diagnosing HDD faults takes a long time, which means you can only quickly replace the problem disk with a new one.

The most primitive way to find out your hard drive is to remove it from the system unit or laptop case. To do this, turn off the power (remove the laptop battery), unscrew the system unit (or the bottom cover on the bottom of the laptop) and take out our HDD, on which all the information of interest will be visible - manufacturer, volume, speed, country of manufacture and other parameters.

If you have no desire to disassemble your laptop or unwind the system unit, then we can find out all the information you need using the software method.

How to find out the real size of your hard drive

For a better understanding, manufacturers and sellers indicate the traditional disk capacity: 40, 60, 120, 160, 320, 500, 640 GB and so on. However, in reality it is always less than stated, because:
1 GB = 1024 MB
1 MB = 1024 KB
1 KB = 1024 bytes

and manufacturers round up to 1000 when making calculations. Below is a table of correspondence between the labeled HDD volume and the real one.

Storage capacity	Total, bytes (rounded)	Real volume
40 GB	40,000,000,000	37.25 GB
60 GB	60,000,000,000	55.88 GB
80 GB	80,000,000,000	74.51 GB
100 GB	100,000,000,000	93.13 GB
120 GB	120,000,000,000	111.76 GB
160 GB	160,000,000,000	149.01 GB
200 GB	200,000,000,000	186.26 GB
250 GB	250,000,000,000	232.83 GB
320 GB	320,000,000,000	298.02 GB
400 GB	400,000,000,000	372.52 GB
500 GB	500,000,000,000	465.65 GB
640 GB	640,000,000,000	595.84 GB

To verify this, right-click on the shortcut My computer and select Control. In the utility that opens, go to the tab Storage devices - Disk Management

In our case, the utility shows 465.65 GB, which corresponds to the 500 GB marking.

How to find out your hard drive model

As in the previous method, right-click on the shortcut My computer and select Control. In the computer management utility that opens, open the tab device Manager. Expand here Disk devices and you will see installed on your computer hard disks.

In our case, there are two of them - Hitachi HTS545050A7E380 and SanDisk SSD i100 24 GB. The first is a traditional HDD, the second is solid state SSD storage device.

How to find out all the information about your hard drive

To the program AIDA64 we already asked for help when we were looking for, etc. Help us this utility this time too.

You can familiarize yourself with the AIDA64 program and download it for free from our website.

Launch AIDA on your computer and go through the tabs Data Storage - ATA. At the top of the window, select the desired hard drive, if there are several of them, and the program will show all the information about the hard drive. The report is divided into parts, the information we need is entitled as ATA Device Properties And Device Physical Data.

As you can see, everything is elementary and absolutely simple if you know what tools to use to find information.

Instructions

Information about the volume of hard disk is available in the BIOS, and you can get it even if there is no operating system installed and it is impossible to open the system unit case. Turn on the power and press the DEL key (less commonly, the F1, F2, F10 keys). The main menu will be displayed BIOS Setup. Depending on the BIOS version, the name of the option that determines the drive parameters varies. Its name can be IDE HDD Auto-Detection, IDE configuration. Select the disk of interest from the list of all installed ones and click the Enter key. A window with HDD characteristics will open, where the size is indicated disk. To convert size disk Divide the number of megabytes by 1024.

Using the Windows operating system, obtain characteristics disk can be done from the Computer Management console. Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Manage.” In the left window, go to the “Management” snap-in disk mi." Launch the Properties command by right-clicking on the graphical representation disk labeled "Disk 0", "Disk 1", etc., depending on what drives you have installed. In the Properties dialog box, go to the Volumes tab. The size will be indicated here disk and the size of the volumes it contains.

Can be used to determine volume disk third party utilities. One of these many utilities is HDD Life Pro. It's easy to find on the Internet. The program is shareware and is quite enough to determine the size of your hard drive. disk. Download the program, install it on your computer and run it. The window that opens will display detailed information about all parameters. disk, including its volume, which will be indicated under the name disk at the top of the window.

Sources:

• How do I find out what kind of hard drive I have?

Most often, the hard drive suffers due to improper use: sudden surges and power outages, shocks and falls. In this case, the mechanical part of the hard drive may fail and damage the surface of the drive on which information is recorded.

You will need

• - HDD;
• - OS Windows;
• - Victoria program

Instructions

If when turning on computer hard the disc makes uncharacteristic sounds - a buzzing or loud knocking, this is a signal that there is a problem with the mechanics. Perhaps the magnetic head unit (MMG) is touching the surface of the drive or the motor cannot spin the disk to required speed. In this case, take care to save important information- copy it to another medium.

Due to damage to the surface of the hard disk bad sectors appear on it. The information recorded in them becomes unreadable. If there are a lot of such areas, there is a danger that the hard drive will soon fail. To check serviceability hard disk using built-in Windows utilities, right-click on the icon disk which needs to be checked. From the context menu, select the “Properties” option, and in the properties window, select the “Service” tab. Click the “Run scan” button, select the options using the checkboxes and click “Run”.

If the logical drive being checked has operating system, a message will appear stating that the scan cannot be performed now, and you will be prompted to start it after a reboot. Answer “Yes.” Checking hard disk will start after a restart before the system boots. The non-system partition will begin scanning immediately.

You can check your hard drive from the command line. Click Start, Run and enter the command chkdsk disk_name /f /rwhere
- disk_name – name of the logical device being checked disk;
- /f – correct errors on the disk;
- /r – search and repair of damaged sectors. If you are testing a non-system disk, the test will begin immediately, if the system disk - after a reboot.

To test hard disk You can use third-party programs Victoria, MHDD or utilities from manufacturers.
Launch Victoria. Go to the SMART tab and click the Get SMART button to run the manufacturer's built-in test. The program will report the result of the check.

Helpful advice

You must download programs from the developer’s website.

Sources:

• download the Victoria utility
• how to check the hard drive on a laptop

In some cases, to determine the volume of hard disk just look at its properties in Windows Explorer. But if you are faced with the task of finding out capacity hard drive that is not connected to the computer, you should use special devices.

Instructions

If you are at a loss about the size of the hard drive on the desktop computer or computer you use, click on the “My Computer” icon on the desktop to Windows. This window can be opened in another way. Hover over the Start button, right-click, and select Open File Explorer (or File Explorer) from the menu.

In the window that opens, you will see one or more icons labeled “local disk” (C, D, E, etc.), as well as disk drive icons. The latter are not of interest to you, since they have nothing to do with the hard drive. The drive itself may be "partitioned" into multiple partitions, in which case you will need to add up the sizes of each of them to find out the total capacity of the hard drive. If there is only one local disk, everything is even simpler - just find out its capacity.

To do this, right-click on the local disk icon and select “Properties” in context menu. On the “General” tab, in the “Capacity” section, you will see data on the size of the hard drive. However, remember that its actual volume will always be less than the data specified by the manufacturer. So, for example, with a declared size of 500 gigabytes, the actual capacity of the disk will be only 452 gigabytes.

To find out the capacity of a disk that is not connected to the computer, you should use a storage box. connecting hard drives via USB connector. Since discs can be various sizes and have different interface connectors, the box for connecting the hard drive should be selected based on its parameters. If the drive fits the size and interface of an existing cable that has an additional connector, connect the hard drive to it after first opening the system unit and turning off the power supply. After successfully connecting to the computer, find out the disk capacity using the above method.

Hard disk, or hard drive, is the main device for storing information in system unit. The performance of the computer and the safety of data largely depend on its characteristics.

Instructions

Determine the type and characteristics of hard disk or perhaps by external inspection. The sticker at the top indicates the model and manufacturer of the equipment, as well as the number of heads and cylinders.

If hard disk is already installed in the system unit, and you don’t want to remove it from there, try getting information from the BIOS. Restart your computer and press the Pause/Break key when information about your computer's devices appears on the screen. To continue output, use Enter. Press these keys one by one until it comes to hard disk A.

There is another way. After bootstrap wait until a prompt similar to this appears on the screen: “Press Delete to setup”. Instead of Delete, the BIOS developer can specify another key, usually one of the function keys. Press this key to enter the menu BIOS settings. Find information about IDE, SCSI or SATA devices in the menu items, depending on which interface is used in your system unit.

Get hard data disk it's possible using Windows. Call up the program launch line using the Win + R hotkeys or select the “Run” option from the “Start” menu. Enter the msconfig command. In the system settings window, go to the “Service” tab, find the “System Information” item and click the “Run” button. In the "System Information" list, expand the "Storage Devices" node and click on "Disks".

If physical disk divided into logical volumes, you will see two “Disks” items. One will contain information about logical disk ah, in another - about physical devices, i.e. full description of their properties: serial number, cluster size, number of cylinders, sectors, tracks and logical partitions.

Determine the characteristics of devices, including hard disk oh, you can use third party programs. One of them, PC Wizard, is available for free download on the developer’s website. Download and install the program. After launch, click on the “Hardware” button and in the “Item” list, click on the “Disk” icon.

Video on the topic

Tip 5: How to diagnose faulty hard disk

To successfully repair or recover data from a hard drive, it is necessary to properly diagnose it. Diagnostics at the Inter Laboratory are free and will take a few minutes. However, so that the result does not disappoint you, you can try to diagnose the disk yourself.

You will need

• A computer with a known good power supply, working cables for connecting the drive, and most importantly - hearing!

Instructions

We connect the drive to the standard computer interface (IDE, SATA, USB) and power supply. Turn on the computer.

Without paying attention to whether the computer boots or not, we listen to what is happening with the disk. A normal disk should spin up, crackle a little (!) (the heads are being recalibrated) and continue spinning. If instead of the sound of plate rotation we hear a squeak, then we have either sticking magnetic heads or a jammed motor (depending on the model). If, after unwinding the plates, we hear distinct knocks or multiple repeating clicks, the magnetic head unit is faulty. The disk cannot be repaired in case of both faults; data recovery is possible only in a specialized laboratory.

If no extraneous sounds are detected, check whether the disk is detected in the BIOS. If not, the disk service information is most likely damaged (it can also be called firmware). Repair is questionable; data recovery laboratory specialists can restore data using special equipment.

If the disk is detected in the BIOS, check its presence in the disk manager: right-click on “my computer” -> management -> disk manager. Information about a normal disk: volume, file system, letter. If we see messages like "file RAW system", "the disk is not initialized", etc., we are dealing with a damaged logical structure of the disk (file system damage). To successfully recover data, you should check the disk for the presence of unreadable sectors, their number (as they may be due to a head failure) and location. If there are no unreadable sectors, you can recover the data programmatically(this, of course, is best left to professionals). If there is damage to the surface, then a special software and hardware complex is needed to read such a disk.

Video on the topic

note

Do not open the hard drive under any circumstances. Opening the hard drive should only be done when special conditions(“clean room”, laminar flow hood) and personnel with sufficient training. Inside the hard drive there are very fine mechanics and VERY clean air. Ingress of any dust particles, accidental contact with disk surfaces, heads, etc. may lead to complete loss of all important data.

Helpful advice

When diagnosing, use only known-good equipment (power supply, cables, etc.). If you decide to recover data yourself, evaluate your strengths and the cost of a mistake.

Sources:

• Data Recovery Lab

Tip 6: How to check state of hard disk in Windows

For each user, sooner or later the question arises of maintaining one important component, where most of the computer’s information is constantly stored. Of course, we are talking about a hard drive, the status of which should be constantly monitored in order to avoid data loss. Special utilities will help us cope with this task.

There are many situations when a computer user needs to obtain information about installed hard drives. This can be done in various ways - using the operating system, using third party applications and without all this. Let's consider the issue in more detail.

In operating rooms Windows systems All the necessary tools are provided to obtain various information about the hard drive. Let's start with the simplest.

device Manager

The Device Manager application displays a list of all built-in motherboard and devices externally connected to the computer, including hard drives. With this system program You can quickly find out the model of the installed hard drive, which will subsequently allow you to obtain more detailed information about it:

• To launch Device Manager, right-click on the My Computer or This PC icon and select Properties. In the upper left corner of the window that opens, find and click on the “Device Manager” element.
• A list with different categories of devices will be displayed on the screen. We are interested in the "Disk devices" section. Open it up.
• After last action The names of the models of hard drives connected to the computer will be displayed on the screen.

To get all the other information about your hard drive, simply enter its model name into the search bar of any search engine. The very first lines of the search result will contain links where you can get detailed information on a particular hard drive model.

System application "Computer Management"

With help system application"Computer Management" you can determine not only the name of the hard drive, but also its total volume, number and name of partitions (local disks):

• Open Control Panel from the Start menu or another method.
• Go to the "System and Security" subsection, then click on the "Administration" element.
• A new window will open with a list system utilities. Find among them and launch the Computer Management application.
• Another window will open. On the left side, expand the “Storage Devices” section, then click on the “Disk Management” item. It should look like this:

• The lower part of the window will display the hard drive numbers ("Disk 0", "Disk 1", "Disk 2", etc.) and the partitions on it. The image above shows information about two hard drives.
• To find out the model of the presented hard drive, you need to right-click on its name in the system (for example, “Disk 0”), then select “Properties”. A small window will open. The "General" tab will display the model name of the selected hard drive.

Command line

In some situations, it is impossible to determine the hard drive model using the two previous methods. This is usually observed when there are viruses on the computer or when some system services responsible for the operation of these applications are disabled. In such cases, the Windows command line (console) can help:

• To open Windows console, press the "Win+R" keys simultaneously, then type "cmd" into the window and press "Enter".
• Next, enter the command “wmic” into the console window and press enter.
• Then re-enter command line— "diskdrive list brief", press "Enter".
• A small list will be displayed on the screen:

• In the "Caption" column you can find out the name of the hard drive models.
• If you need to clarify the total capacity of the hard drive in gigabytes, then the number (number of bytes) from the “Size” column should be divided 3 times by 1024. For example, the disk “ST3160215AS” has a capacity of 160039272960 bytes, i.e. 160039272960/1024/1024/1024 = 149.04 GB.

Programs for identifying hard drives

On the Internet you can find a lot of applications that allow you to obtain a wide variety of information about hard drives, including data about it that is difficult or even impossible to obtain using the operating system. One such program is Ontrack EasyRecovery. In general, the program is designed to recover lost data from a hard drive, but with its help you can get quite detailed information.

• Open the Ontrack EasyRecovery application. On the first page, click on the “Continue” button.
• On next page program, select the “Hard Disk” item and click on the “Continue” button again.
• The “Disks and volumes found” table will be displayed on the screen, in which you can see the hard drive model and the partitions present on it.

• Right-click on the name of the hard drive, then select "Disk Information".
• A new window will open containing all the important data about the hard drive. For example:

Find out the hard drive model in BIOS

If your computer does not have an operating system or for some reason has stopped working properly, you can find out the hard drive model. This firmware is built into the PC motherboard, so it can work without any OS. To obtain the hard drive model using this method, follow the instructions:

• Turn off your computer.
• Turn on the PC again and immediately press the “F2” or “Delete” key. The BIOS user interface should appear on the computer screen. If this does not happen, you may need to press a different key (you can check on the motherboard manufacturer's website).
• The name of the hard drive model can be listed in the first tab of the BIOS interface. For example:

• If on home page necessary information is missing, then you should look for it in the “Boot”, “Advanced” or other tab. Just go through all the tabs of the BIOS interface.

You can also find out which hard drive is on your computer by inspecting its case. Any hard drive has a sticker that indicates the model name, volume, serial number and other information.