I have 3 hard drives in my computer and I can not figure out how to distinguish which physical hard drive in my computer represents the drive letter. When I am in the BIOS I can see the hard drive names; Samsung, Hitachi, blah but when I am in Windows I do not know which hard drive that Windows is running on. I would like to figure out how to find this out because I am reformatting all of them and then running speed tests to see which one is the fastest. Then I will install Windows on the fastest and Linux on the second fastest. This brings me to my second question how do I set it so when I boot up the BIOS asks if I want to boot into Linux or windows? Other notes I can not trace the SATA port number to the physical hard drive because the cables are a mess.
26 Answers
If your drives are in any kind of RAID configuration, I don't believe that this is possible as Windows won't see the individual disks (and they'll use a generic driver).
However, if they aren't, you should open the MIcrosoft Management Console (start > run > mmc) and load in the Disk Management snap-in. This will show you show you which drive letters are assigned to which disks and you can check the disk properties (right click > properties) to see the vendor.
8To make things clear:
Open Start Menu
In search box type - Computer Management
In left hand tree menu - Storage-> Disk Management
Lower pane - Right click "Disk 0" (grey area) -> Properties
This will provide the model number of the drive...not the serial number.
If all of your drives are the same, unplug and use process of elimination.
If you have to use that method, be sure to look in your bios and copy down the primary boot disk priority order...and if the one you unplug keeps the system from booting...obviously that one is the boot disk. When you plug it back in make sure to reset it's priority position as "first" since some systems will hang on other drives.
For the second question: look for a "boot manager"
3Right-click in the console on the disk drive -> Properties -> Hardware -> Properties -> Volumes -> To fill.
Pop off the side panel and Look and see how your hard drive is connected to the motherboard. SATA 0 is your main C Drive. SATA 1 will be a secondary drive. If you have IDE, you will have a IDE Primary and IDE Secondary. You can only have as many drives as you have SATA controller ports on your MB so there are only 2-3 (4?) possibilities. Just look and see it they are labled 0,1,2 etc. Follow the cable to that HD and then look at your WINDOWS EXPLORER. They should be labeled according to the controller port.
I'm using Windows 10.
What I have discovered is to,
- Let's right-click the Start Menu
- Select the Disc Management (7th one from the top)
- This box is broken into a top half and bottom half, we will be using the Bottom half
- Select the hard drive by clicking on the box and then right-click and select Properties
- Select the tab named VOLUMES, here you will find the Disk Number, Type, etc....
- I found doing this ALSO shows your USB connected Hard Drives Disk Numbers as well.
The Windows system drive has the windows Icon:
In this case, it is drive E.
