Windows 10: Windows Misidentifies C Drive as Solid State Drive - cannot defrag?

Hello,

When I was running Windows 7, my system had a small solid state C drive that did not have enough space for windows 10 upgrade. I got a larger 2TB regular hard disk and used the manufacturer's software to clone the old Windows-7 SSD C drive to the new 2TB and then upgraded to Windows 10.

Now under windows 10, when go into defrag, the C Drive shows as a Solid State drive and of course windows does not want to optimize it.

The new drive definitely is not SSD. I assume somehow that setting was cloned from the old disk.

Is there either a way to change the C drive to a regular "hard disk drive" or force windows to defrag what it thinks is a SSD?

Thank you in advance.

:)

 

Windows 10 SSD issues - Windows sees my WD Black hard drive as an SSD - wont defragment.

Hey there sentrytv,

Cloning a SSD to a HDD and vice versa can cause such issues related to drivers and the way the different storage devices are recognized.

It is recommended to do fresh install of the OS when moving from one type of storage device to another in order to avoid such issues.

This link may be of use to you.

.

 

Windows 10 defragment and optimize not working

My c drive cannot be optimization. Media type says it is solid state drive. Please can you help.

 

You might want to start by looking in Device Manager (right click Start and select Device Manager) and seeing how that disk drive is identified. Does it show as the SSD?

 

Thank you for replying. Looking as Device Manager, it appears that the correct driver for the disk drive is installed and in use. It is not a driver for SSD drive.

I am thinking that this "Media Type" shown in the Optimize Drive is stored somewhere in the registry. But where? I found some settings in the registry, but they are hex?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

 

Solution!

Run WinSat formal in elevated command prompt and it rescans the disks and resets the disk back to normal disk drive *Smile

 

winsat formal runs a pre-defined set of assessments and saves the data to an XML file in %systemroot%\performance\winsat\datastore. There are no command line parameters available for use with the formal assessment.

From winsat formal

 

Sadly didn't work for me. Still shows Solid State.

 

Hi, try Win key X, Computer Management, Disk Management.
Can you post a screenshot?

Secondly, if you (temporarily!) download some other defrag tool, what does that think of C:?

If the first appears normal (i.e. no SSD) and the second would defrag C:, I suppose that suggests the identity of C: is as you say held somewhere else.

 

Hi thanks. The PC is at another site which I'll be visiting again over the next few days. Yes, I was going to try 'Defragger' to see what that finds. I did look at Disk Management and it displays the drive as 'normal' as it would any other standard C Drive with all the partitions. The Dell PC does use RAID which came as standard so I wonder whether that is part of the problem as Device Manager doesn't list the actual two drive manufacturers etc. The Win 10 upgrade may have thrown something away? I'll let you know what I find for info.

 

OK, so I downloaded 'Defragger' and it instantly found the harddrive(s) and is busy defragging the array. Looks like the Win 10 upgrade with the MS deframenting tool is confused by a Dell RAID array structure?

 

Mm, worth researching... and checking for RAID-specific experiences. Maybe you can start a new thread with RAID in the title so people with that expertise will see it?

 

Same situation here. after upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, only one pair of RAID 0 disks identified as Solid State Drive.

1st pair: 2 x WD 500 GB SATA 3 > has 4 partitions, all of them identified as "Solid state drive"
2nd pair: 2 x Seagate 500 GB SATA 3 > has 2 partitions, all of them identified as "Hard disk drive"
3rd pair: 2 x Seagate 500 GB SATA 2 > has 2 partitions, all of them identified as "Hard disk drive"
All pairs on the same controller.

 

See this thread, as they had the same problem and fixed it:
Solved Win 10 Optimize Drives say I have SSD when in fact it is a HDD - Windows 10 Forums