A common request when creating automated desktop builds or custom maintenance tools is the ability detect if the main system drive is an SSD disk or not. This information can be used to configure a system in a particular way. For example, to run (or not run) certain maintenance tasks or to optimally configure the system settings or services to take advantage of the way SSD disks perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recent versions of Windows, like Windows 8, automatically optimise certain tasks if an SSD is detected, but earlier versions of Windows commonly used in corporate environments lack this functionality so it must be done manually. This kind of process is prone to errors as it relies on having the engineer decide if the disk is an SSD as some sort of build parameter. In other cases I\u2019ve seen people maintain lists of drive vendors and models that are entered into .txt files and used by scripts and WMI calls to look for a match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently released an updated version of the AutoIt<\/a> scripting language and as part of the update I wanted to update the DriveGetType<\/a> function to provide a solution to this problem. I added the ability to detect the bus and SSD status of a drive. The basis of the method I used is that described in this TechNet blog<\/a> post about how the Windows defragmenter determines SSD drives. The main tests it performs are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mostly all modern SSD drives are populating these values so it’s a better way of detection than checking WMI for vendor strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a basic AutoIt script that will output a simple onscreen message showing the type, bus and SSD status of a given drive letter. Remember to download AutoIt<\/a> to run it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Example Script<\/h2>\n\n\n\n