How can you find out the hard drive type, size (3.5” or 2.5”) on a PC?

How can I determine if a PC’s hard drive is SATA or IDE, and also if it’s a 3.5” one or 2.5” one.

It would have taken you less time to remove the side from your computer and look at your hard drive than it did for you to type that question. Just open the thing up and take a look. It's perfectly safe to do that while the computer is running (it's safe if this is a desktop computer), and there are probably only 1 or 2 screws holding it on.

If you have a laptop, it is definitely, 100% guaranteed to NOT be a 3.5" drive.

If you have a desktop, and it's not extremely small (so if it's regular desktop computer-sized, then it's almost definitely a 3.5" drive.

If you purchased this computer within the last 5 years, I can pretty much guarantee that it's a SATA drive and not IDE/ATA-6/PATA.

I don't think you'll get a reliable answer with any software. Since computers can use PATA/SATA adaptors, some controllers report SATA drives as PATA due to their firmware etc. If you have access to the machines then it's a whole different story but each will likely require a different tack.

For most machines, however, if you head to the manufacturer's website and supply the model & serial number it will tell you the system's original configuration.

(editing to make simpler)

If this is Windows, right click on my computer or computer and click manage (or open computer management in your favourite way). Go to device manager and expand disk drives. Double click on your drive and then click details and you could be able to see all the information you need.

Under Hardware Ids, you should be able to see your hard drives code, However only write down model number.

For me it shows - IDE\ST9320421ASG____________________________SD13____

However, I built my laptop and know it is a SATA drive, so I think the safest thing to do is just write down the model number (you can just see this by expanding Disk Drives without even going in to details), and then Googling the model number.

Whilst you can see SATA / IDE in device manager (assuming windows) I am not sure it is possible to see physical size.

for me whenever i needed to find something out about a machine i used Everest - you can find the Free Edition here: http://majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

The Information from Everest and a little searching on the internet always made me find out about the parts in my machines.