Windows 10: SSD showing up as HDD

since this question is already closed in thread https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/ssd-showing-up-as-hdd-in-device-manager/e1dad58d-4bbb-40f6-862b-783b18f06371 I refer to it herewith again. Since it has at the time of writing this one here one hundred "I've the same question" requests, it is worth reviewing its answer and potentially get a solution as well.The 'answer' to the question above is [..] it's just naming [..]. This is wrong, Windows behavior is different if a device is HDD or SSD, e.g. Windows Defrag is not trimming an HDD but SSD, on the other hand, it is no

:)

 

SSD now showing as HDD

Hi,

My name is Igor, I have 12 Microsoft MVP awards. It's a pleasure for me to help others and I'll do all my best to help you. I'm sorry you have a problems.

You may check drive's model in Task manager. Open Performance tab, select drive at the left and you'll see its model in the top right corner.

Likely HDD was listed as SSD due to its internal organization. I suppose this is WD drive with SMR technology and it supports TRIM. Please run command prompt as administrator and show a result of

fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo d:

command.

No, drive identification as SSD or HDD in Windows should have no influence to drive's performance.

You may check SSD with manufacturer's tool and HDD with third party CrystalDiskInfo tool.

And please show Performance tab of Task manager with SSD selected and HDD selected when you see slowness.

 

SSD now showing as HDD

I purchased an Alienware Ryzen R12 machine last year.

I chose 500 gb SSD and 2 tb HDD

When I received the machine, I didn't notice at first but the task manager listed BOTH hard drives as SSD!

My machine has been SUPER fast and I just considered Dell's mistake to be a free upgrade. However, I've noticed over the past few days that my machine appears to be running a little slower than normal. It will drop frames when playing an online game such as World of Tanks or just won't respond for about one second while I'm dragging the mouse across the screen...my cursor just doesn't move. It's very odd and EXTREMELY disappointing/frustrating to have such a beast of a machine and it lags.

Today I was looking at my task manager and suddenly it has the 2 tb SSD is now listed as an HDD!

Is this why my machine is suddenly running slower and "lagging"?!

I'm thinking my next step will be to open the housing to verify just what type of hard drive I actually have. However, if I do in fact have an HDD then I want to change it back to where the computer thought I had SSD because it was running so much smoother back then. Again, this is a new issue from within the past few days, so if there were any Microsoft updates that hit recently, that may be the culprit.

 

OS on new SSD, keep existing data on HDD and use as external drive

Hi,

use steps you suggested, there should be no problem.

Just replace HDD with SSD first then run installation. Do not forget to remove Windows files from HDD after the end of a process.