How to detect SSD in Mac OS X?

Question

Is there a reliable, quick, deterministic way (i.e. not a benchmark) to check whether the system drive Mac OS X is on is a Solid State Drive?

Is there any other

Answer 1

If you're trying to get that kind of information, you're best guess is IOKit.

You can try some of it's functionality using the ioreg command line tool or the IORegistryExplorer.

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Here's some code that might help you. It fetches all hard drives that aren't a RAID and aren't partitions. This isn't what you want, but it might get you started.

#import "TWDevice.h"

#include 
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#include 


@implementation TWDevice

@synthesize name, devicePath, size, blockSize, writable, icon;

+ (NSArray *)allDevices {
    // create matching dictionary
    CFMutableDictionaryRef classesToMatch;
    classesToMatch = IOServiceMatching(kIOMediaClass);
    if (classesToMatch == NULL) {
        [NSException raise:@"TWError" format:@"Classes to match could not be created"];
    }

    // get iterator of matching services
    io_iterator_t mediaIterator;
    kern_return_t kernResult;
    kernResult = IOServiceGetMatchingServices(kIOMasterPortDefault,
                                                                      classesToMatch,
                                                                      &mediaIterator);

    if (kernResult != KERN_SUCCESS) {
        [NSException raise:@"TWError" format:@"Matching services did not succed."];
    }

    // iterate over all found medias
    io_object_t nextMedia;
    NSMutableArray *detectedDevices = [NSMutableArray array];
    while (nextMedia = IOIteratorNext(mediaIterator)) {
        NSMutableDictionary *properties;
        kernResult = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties(nextMedia,
                                                                                  (CFMutableDictionaryRef *)&properties,
                                                                                  kCFAllocatorDefault, 0);

        if (kernResult != KERN_SUCCESS) {
            [NSException raise:@"TWError" format:@"Getting properties threw error."];
        }

        // is it a whole device or just a partition?
        if ([[properties valueForKey:@"Whole"] boolValue] &&
            ![[properties valueForKey:@"RAID"] boolValue]) {
            TWDevice *device = [[[TWDevice alloc] init] autorelease];

            device.devicePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%sr%@", _PATH_DEV, [properties valueForKey:@"BSD Name"]];
            device.blockSize = [[properties valueForKey:@"Preferred Block Size"] unsignedLongLongValue];
            device.writable = [[properties valueForKey:@"Writable"] boolValue];
            device.size = [[properties valueForKey:@"Size"] unsignedLongLongValue];

            io_name_t name;
            IORegistryEntryGetName(nextMedia, name);
            device.name = [NSString stringWithCString:name encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

            …

            [detectedDevices addObject:device];
        }

        // tidy up
        IOObjectRelease(nextMedia);
        CFRelease(properties);
    }
    IOObjectRelease(mediaIterator);

    return detectedDevices;
}

@end