I have a server running and would like to know if I have an SSD installed in it. Please note that I can't open the case to look for the model no. and to look up the internet to figure out if its an SSD. Any help with this regard will be great.

FYI, I work on Windows environment.

Thanks in advance!!

So you can use the Internet to post this question, but you can't use the Internet to search for a model number?

Is this a homework assignment?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Well, I can't use the Internet to search for the model no. cause I dont have the model no.



I am trying to test a system on various parameters and its really important to know if its a SSD that I am running my experiments against.

Thanks for your reply. Do care to give me a solution after thoroughly reading the question. I guess none of the schools gives such an assignment of checking if you have a SSD.

Sorry, your post was ambiguous.

To answer your question, can you not see the model number in BIOS and then search for it on the Internet?

Otherwise, can you see the model number with a tool such as HD Sentinel or CrystalDiskInfo? Is the drive in a RAID?

Can you see the model number in Device Manager?

Otherwise, you could use CrystalDiskInfo to obtain the Identify Device data for your drive and examine the "RPM" word (word 217). A value of 1 indicates that the drive is an SSD, ie a non-rotating storage device.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

HDDScan can show detailed ID info, including SSD bit decoding

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

you dont say if windows or linux or mac or whatever. in windows cant you go to the device manager and look at storage then google the numbers there? in Linux there would be similar CLI comands to read your hardware. Mac, I guess the same though I dont deal with them unless I have to.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

OOPs, im my defence I just drove 13 hours... Sorry about that. But my other comments still stand.

Yeah, the answer is so obvious that I thought the question may have been posed as an academic one, perhaps to test the OP's knowledge of the ATA standard.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for your replies. I was able to infer it from the BIOS. Thanks fzabkar for pointing me out. Just a pointer, HaQue I did try to look at the device manager. Ofcourse thats the first place to look but you will have to also think that other circumstances where the complete device info is not provided by whoever installed the server. Please note that I mentioned its a server and not a personal machine. Anyways thanks for your solutions.

CrystalDiskInfo, and smartctl, and even SeaTools for Windows, all provide the facility to retrieve the "raw" Identify Device data, in addition to the author's interpretation of these data.

Is that something that you might consider implementing in your next release?

Here is an example:
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/attachments/stx/ata_drives/32473/1/New%20Text%20Document.txt

The reason I ask is that I was recently involved in a thread at Seagate's forum where a 3TB drive was reporting a capacity of 800GB. I found it difficult to determine whether this was due to a HPA, or a 32-bit LBA limit in an external enclosure, or something else. It was also not clear whether the enclosure was configured for 4KB sectoring, or whether the software was reporting the drive's AF status. In the end, the raw Identify Device data cleared everything up - there was a HPA, and there was also a 32-bit LBA limit.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

No problems, glad you figured it out.
Though whenever I install servers, I never need to add that info, windows does it when it detects the device. The only way I would think you would not see it is if an administrator has restricted access to the control panel and/or details in there via group policy or such.

If you have enough access to the machine to reboot to check in the BIOS, then I wouldnt think this is an issue.

Thanks for the follow up.

cheers