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How to find out the real size of your hard drive. How to find out the capacity of a hard drive? What is the capacity of a hard drive?

When assembling a computer, you have to deal with a huge amount of information. The choice of components is influenced by many factors. But there are also elements that remain unchanged in any case. For example, it will not affect the choice of video card, motherboard and other PC parts.

But it can affect the operation of the system. This is due to the fact that insufficient memory leads to lags and failures of various processes. Therefore, it is important to know what capacity the hard drive has.

Device

A hard drive, or hard drive, is a device that stores information and provides random access to it. The hard drive is based on magnetic recording. At the moment it is the main drive in consumer systems. Although they are actively starting to be replaced with faster devices - SSDs.

Characteristics

The capacity of a hard drive is one of its characteristics. It describes the amount of data that can be stored on a particular device. In addition to this parameter, hard drives are characterized by their interface - the conditional technical interaction of two devices. Modern models have received many interface modifications, so it is important to pay attention to this point when choosing.

Further, hard drives differ in physical size. Although it is unfair to say this at the moment, since from a certain point most manufacturers adhere to the standardized form factor of 3.5 inches for desktop PCs and 2.5 for laptops. The characteristics include spindle rotation, random access time, number of operations and energy consumption.

Capacity

Now let's move directly to the hard drive capacity. It is not difficult to guess that a lot of time has passed since the advent of the first railways. Accordingly, this figure grew exponentially. Now you can find drives with any capacity up to 10 TB, if we talk about the 3.5 form factor. It is also important to remember that disks always have a capacity that is a multiple of 1024. Although the manufacturers themselves always indicate parameters that are multiples of 1000. If you see that the drive has 200 GB, in fact its capacity is 186.2 GB.

Connected

Of course, if you bought your own hard drive, you most likely know its capacity. It is indicated in the store, on the packaging, and even on a sticker on top of the device itself. In this case, you can only double-check the hard drive capacity. Those who ordered equipment from third-party resources may also need to understand this issue. For example, Chinese online stores have long been famous for changing parameters. Thus, customers receive devices from the wrong company or with the wrong characteristics. This may require a similar capacitance analysis.

So, the equipment can be installed in the case and its characteristics can be viewed through the system. To do this, click on the “My Computer” icon. A new window opens. There will be one or more disks in front of us. You should not take into account only the drive and flash drive, if installed.

Usually, when installing a railway system, it is divided into several parts. The entire system is placed on drive C. It is recommended not to install anything else here. Drives D, E, and so on contain the user’s personal data. The total amount of their volume is the capacity of the railway. To fold it, you need to right-click on each disk, and then go to “Properties”. A new window will appear in which you will see a chart as well as numerical values. It shows how much is free and occupied, as well as the total volume. When calculating, do not forget to make allowances for the fact that the manufacturer indicates “beautiful” numbers. But instead of 500 GB, you will only have 452 GB.

Unconnected

There is a possibility that you just bought or were given a hard drive. Before connecting it, you can check the capacity. But for this you will need a special box. This is because not all devices have a USB interface. To check, we need to connect the hard drive through this connector. After you connect the hard drive to the system, you can check it using the method described above.

Programs

Perhaps for some reason the system check method through “My Computer” is not suitable for you. In this case, a third-party program can help. For example, AIDA64 Extreme Edition. It is enough to download it and install it on the hard drive being tested.

After launch, the software will scan the system. By the way, it shows not only information on the hard drive, but also on all other components. Therefore, after scanning you will have to find specifically the hard drive parameters. Then go to the “Data Storage” section, and then - “Total Size”. Here you can find out about the drive model and other useful information.

Record breakers

When purchasing, it is better to know the maximum information capacity of the hard drive. Of course, you are unlikely to need the largest hard drive, but it’s worth at least understanding the scale of development of this device. So, the oldest capacity used was an 8 MB drive. Nowadays, a photo from some smartphones won’t even fit there. The most popular nowadays are HDDs starting from 500 GB. Although some older laptop models also have variations with 128 GB, etc.

It is known that a large hard drive capacity has virtually no effect on system performance. Sometimes you may not find space for your data and files as your PC may not be able to handle the volume. It will require more memory for temporary system files. From here, noticeable “brakes” of the system will appear.

The most capacious at the moment is a giant 10 TB drive. Such a disk can cost about 25 thousand rubles. But it will definitely be a lot for the average user. There is also a 6 TB model. Its price is slightly lower - 14 thousand rubles. It is very good that manufacturers, in addition to increasing capacity, also care about good speed, wear resistance and quality of materials.

Regular PC users do not need to know the components, the main thing is that everything works. If problems start with the computer, data is lost or there is not enough space, then the question of what hard drive is in the computer becomes relevant. If this is your case or you just want to know how good your computer is, in this article we will look at how to find out the hard drive model in a computer or laptop.

Types of disks

At the moment, there are three main types of disk drives: HDD, SDD and external hard drives.

  • They are common in almost every shop-assembled computer and cannot be confused with anything else.
  • – a modern and good alternative to HDDs, since they do not have any mechanics. Silent, fast and, accordingly, expensive.
  • are also common, they do not need to be placed inside the case, and are easy to connect to the computer.

How to learn everything about your hard drive

Let's look at several ways to find out information about your hard drive

Remove the hard drive from the case

For classic stationary desktops, it’s easiest to open the case and see what kind of drives you have installed. On laptops, depending on the model, only a screwdriver may be enough to get to the disk, but sometimes you need to disassemble the entire laptop case.

Important! If you use this method, be careful because it is very easy to damage the hard drive.

External drives are just a box and a hard drive inside. Therefore, despite the fact that external drives are produced by many more companies. For example, an external drive may be from Transcend, but inside there will be a .

As a result, if you managed to get a disk, then the hard disk itself always contains detailed information such as volume, model, manufacturer, etc.

For Windows OS users

Through "My Computer". This method is suitable for Windows OS. This is the easiest method and does not require the presence or removal of the hard drive itself. It is enough to do the following:

  • right-click on the “My Computer” shortcut;
  • click on the “Management” item;
  • go to the “Storage Devices” tab – “Disk Management”;
  • also in the “Device Manager” tab, select “Disk devices”, there you will see the disk model.

The procedure may vary slightly depending on the version of Windows. In any case, in the Device Manager, in the “Disk Devices” section, you will see all the SSD and HDD models that your operating system sees. If you know for sure that you have a hard drive and valuable data on it, then this is a reason to turn to specialists.

For Linux OS users

Via hdparm. This way. This program is automatically installed in every modern version of Linux.

To access, you need to open a terminal and run hdparm in the console with the –i /dev/hda parameter. You will see the main parameters of your hard drive

Using programs

Everything will show which device you have installed. This function is also available in all applications for testing and analyzing computer configuration. For example, in EVERSET you just need to select the “Data Storage” tab and you will see every characteristic of your Hard Drive.

Don't be surprised if you see the total volume less than stated, it is always lower than stated due to the characteristics of manufacturers. The difference is always ~7%, so for a disk with a declared capacity of 500 GB we will get 465 GB of free space. If every gigabyte is important to you, always choose one with a larger capacity.

Hard disk capacity is a characteristic that is most often the decisive factor for the user when choosing or replacing a disk. So how can you find out the real volume, given that when marking hard drives, a gigabyte is equated not to 1024, but to 1000 megabytes. And if in the recent past, when the HDD size rarely exceeded 80 GB, this could be neglected, then with a disk size of more than a terabyte, the losses amount to significant figures. You can get information about the real size of your hard drive both from the BIOS and using the operating system and various third-party utilities.

You will need

  • a computer running the Windows operating system, HDD Life Pro utility, Internet access.

Instructions

  • Information about the hard drive capacity 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 computer's power and press the DEL key (less commonly, the F1, F2, F10 keys). The BIOS Setup main menu appears. 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 in the list of all installed media and click the Enter key. A window with HDD characteristics will open, where the disk size is indicated. To convert disk size to gigabytes, divide the number of megabytes by 1024.
  • Using the Windows operating system, you can obtain disk characteristics from the Computer Management console. Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Manage.” In the left window, go to Disk Management. Launch the Properties command by right-clicking on the graphical representation of the drive labeled "Disk 0", "Disk 1", etc., depending on what drives you have installed. In the Properties dialog box, go to the Volumes tab. This will indicate the size of the disk and the size of the volumes on it.
  • You can use third-party utilities to determine disk space. One of these many utilities is HDD Life Pro. It's easy to find on the Internet. The shareware program is quite enough to determine the size of your hard drive. Download the program, install it on your computer and run it. The window that opens will display detailed information about all the parameters of the disk, including its volume, which will be indicated under the disk name at the top of the window.

    • Modern hard drives come in two types: HDD and SSD. Let's first look at these two types. If you talk about them in simple and understandable language, you will get the following. An HDD is a familiar box containing round magnetized plates. They store information and read heads that read this information. The spindles in this device spin the disks up to several thousand revolutions per minute. The most common speeds are 5400 and 7200 rpm.

    An SSD or solid-state drive is, simply put, a large flash drive, but with incredibly high read and write speeds, and the larger the file size, the more significant the difference between an SSD and a regular hard drive becomes. Any program installed on an SSD drive starts several times faster, as almost everyone already knows. But how can an ordinary user find out which disk is installed in his computer?

    Three ways to find out which hard drive is installed

    There are three common ways to find out which disk is installed in your computer (ssd or hdd): using Windows tools, software, or disassembling the computer.

    First - Using Windows Tools

    The easiest and most up-to-date way to determine the type of hard drive is using Windows tools. You need to hold down the Win + R keys. In the window that appears, enter the combination “mmc devmgmt.msc”. The combination is written without quotes, after writing the combination, you need to press the OK button.

    Next, you will have an open device manager; this combination works on all Windows operating systems. In the Device Manager that appears, find the disk devices button. Open and look at the name of your disk.

    As a result, you will get the full name of your disk. You will need to enter this information in any search engine. Most often, this panel contains only one disk device, but if you have two, you need to enter each name separately. Any search engine by name will give you the characteristics of the disk and other information about your device.

    This method is the simplest and most accessible for every user. But there is also a second way that will help you find out what kind of drive you have using special applications and programs.

    The second is to determine the hard drive type using AIDA64

    The most common program that will help you find out which hard drive is installed is AIDA64. The program can be downloaded absolutely free from the Internet. It is convenient, provides a huge amount of useful information for almost your entire system and has a very simple and user-friendly interface. In addition, the program not only provides information about your hard drive, but also provides complete characteristics of your entire machine. Working with it is very easy and simple; in order to find out what kind of disk you have, you need to:

    Launch the AIDA64 application.

    Go to the data storage tab, and then select the ATA tab. It is this tab that will be responsible for all the information about your hard drive, its values, properties, device type and much more.

    In addition, this application will help you understand and find out the characteristics of other devices, information about your computer, and also improve the quality and performance of your operating system.

    Download AIDA64— https://www.aida64.com/downloads

    The third way is visual

    And the last way by which you can find out which disk is installed on your computer is to disassemble the PC. Open the computer lid and find the hard drive. As written above, a hard drive is a box that contains magnetic plates. Most often, the hard drive is located in a separate “area” allocated for this device. After which we need to get to the hard drive and read information about it. A regular HDD looks like this:

    But if you have an SSD, it will look a little different, resembling a large flash drive

    At the same time, you can always read information on the hard drive and find out its data.

    As you can see, there are quite a few ways to find out what hard drive is on your computer. Each method is interesting, convenient and simple in its own way. In addition to these methods, there are other options, but they are less practical and convenient, especially for ordinary users. Each owner of his personal computer must know what kind of hard drive he has and distinguish an SSD drive from an HDD drive.

    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 and what is it like?

    Among users, the hard drive also has other names - 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, which is hidden in a 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 problems occur with the operating system, which in most cases indicates incorrect operation of the hard drive, then 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 amount of Hard Disk Drive available on your computer, you need to right-click on the desktop icon or 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 what model of hard drive “C” you need to perform the following steps. 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 do so, 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 ways to find the necessary information about the installed Hard Disk Drive on your PC or laptop.