How to identify if my laptop has an SSD drive installed.

Willyk

Hi,

I bought an HP ENVY 6 ultrabook yesterday. It was advertised as having a 32 GB SSD drive aswell as a 500 GB sata drive. Now when I have it home, I can't seem to see the 32 GB drive listed under available drives, or in device manager or under disk manager. I had assumed it would appear as an extra hard disk which I could then select like a normal hard drive. I did not check in the shop to see what was listed. The online information that I have been looking at does not make it that clear. I have been back to the shop and they had no idea. Can anyone advise me on how to check please.

Many Thanks.

Willyk

molerat

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/laptop/3372204/hp-envy-ultrabook-4-review/
says it does but uses it as a cache so may not be visible, look in device manager / properties / disk drives.

kev225

SSD drives are usually used for the operating system to be installed on as this is where their speed is most useful.

Go into 'control panel', 'device manager', click on 'disk drives'.

You should have two disk drives listed there, you can Google their product numbers to see what sort of drive they are.

That said, if the shop you bought it from has no idea, that's pretty pathetic on their part.

Willyk

Thanks for the replies.

Checked earlier under disk drives and only the sata drive there. I think the info that I have been given by the shop is incorrect. I am now waiting a call back from them. Problem I have now is my son has happily been using it all day (birthday pressie) and has no idea what an ssd is, but I basically bought it for this feature. Anyway will wait to see what the shop says.

kev225

32GB of SSD space doesn't seem like enough for me as Once the OS is installed you have very little space for programs, I don't know what the caching that molerat mentioned is but maybe that gets around it.

Try looking at what devices are shown in the bios (when you boot up your computer there should be an option to press an F6 or whichever number and go into bios).

Notmyrealname

kev225 wrote: »

32GB of SSD space doesn't seem like enough for me as Once the OS is installed you have very little space for programs

You have plenty of space for programmes. A typical Windows installation takes up less than 15GB. That leaves 17GB for installing programmes. Even MS Office with everything installed isn't more than a couple of GB. Most are a couple of hundred MB.

On most of my customers laptops, the most they have is around 40GB and that is including all photos, music etc.

On my own HDD I am using 63GB. I have on there all my music, photos, several 4GB image files of operating system installation discs, drivers for dozens of laptops.....

jayme1

kev225 wrote: »

32GB of SSD space doesn't seem like enough for me as Once the OS is installed you have very little space for programs, I don't know what the caching that molerat mentioned is but maybe that gets around it.

Try looking at what devices are shown in the bios (when you boot up your computer there should be an option to press an F6 or whichever number and go into bios).

the SSD in this case is not for the OS to be installed on, it is being used as a cache for the HDD to make accessing programs faster most likely using Intel Smart Response (a bit like Windows ReadyBoost), therefore 32GB is plenty of space for that.

you are correct though that booting into the BIOS/UEIF should display the drive, therefore the OP should do that and look what is connected to the SATA ports.

Toxteth_OGrady

@OP

Click on the Start button and type [without quotes] "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" into the Search for programs and files box, open it.

If your SSD is being used for an SRT cache it will still show in the Intel RST status.

Willyk

No its definitely not there. Nothing in BIOS and no Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Thanks again for all the replies.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Assuming Win7 goto the Disk Defrag if your disk is showing its not an SSD ~ or ~ go here and down AS SSD benchmark to the desktop, its a standalone so just run it, if you have an SSD in there it will give you all the info.

almillar

How about this - is it by any chance a hybrid drive, IE a spinning disk with some SSD as a buffer? If so, it'll only show up to Windows (and the BIOS) as 1 drive. Can you find out the model number of the hard drive?