How to Test Hard Drive Performance

 


Below are two url’s to web sites that have a hard drive test utility:

www.fixdown.com/godownload.asp?id=5465&gdcnc-downs2=99e165e480680ba9

www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HD-Tach.shtml

the url’s should link to the program file for: HD Tach 3.0.4.0

Please download the test program and install it

Once installed, run the Quick Bench test and check the results as pictured below.

The graph displays the read speed. The outer sectors of a drive are always faster than the center of the disk. As the drive fills up with data, the drive slows down. For maximum performance the database.nv2 files should be parked near the beginning or outer sectors of the drive (this can be achieved with defragmentation settings).

The most important number is the Average read: 55.2 MB/s

Real World Results
Burst speed
Average read
Average workstations and servers should be equal to or higher than
100 MB/s
50 MB/s
     
The above graph results are from a May 2004 computer, Pentium 4 CPU 2.8 Ghz, WD 120 Gb hard drive
   
     
The QW Page server built in November 2007 performance has
235 MB/s
134 MB/s
This server has 4 WD Raptor SATA WD1500ADFD drives in RAID 10 configuration. The motherboard is an ASUS P5K-E, Intel E6850 Core 2 Duo CPU 3.0 Ghz.    

Hard drive performance is a combination of the physical drive, i.e. the transfer rate, the interface and bus speed, i.e. the I/O controller hub, EIDE, SATA or SCSI and the operating system's I/O drivers. All these components need to be matched or else poor performance will be the result.