Check the speed of the hard drive or SSD. how to check hard drive speed how to measure hard drive speed

With the active use of a PC, you probably often experienced noticeable lags and friezes at those moments when solid amounts of data were written to the hard disk cache, or when you performed a save during the game. The reason for this is the insufficiently high speed of the internal drive. As you know, the hard drive is the most vulnerable component in the PC hardware configuration, and no matter how powerful your PC architecture is, even if you installed the latest generation processor and video card, if the hard drive is slow - a stable game with a high FPS and high opening speed you will not see web pages in the browser, as well as work in a text or spreadsheet editor. Today I will talk about how to check the speed of a drive, how to make sure your drive is fast enough to handle all the load placed on it, and how to compare it with an SSD drive that you may have borrowed from friends for a couple of days. use and test. After completing the check described below, you can make sure that the hard drive is the weakest link in your system, and whether it needs to be replaced with a more productive and powerful one (fortunately, their price today has reached quite acceptable sizes, and in terms of speed they are clearly ahead of HDD drives ). We devoted to the topic of a basic comparison of HDD and SSD drives, in the same article we will check all the speed characteristics of our "workhorse", and find out how much they are ahead (or behind) of each other.

To test the speed and performance of hard drives, you can find a lot of software that compares the speed of reading and writing data with different block sizes installed on the drive, as well as the queue depth. Write / read can be random and sequential - different types are needed for disks of different sizes and, accordingly, blocks. Sequential write will be relevant with a block size of 1024 KB and above. At smaller sizes, it will be absolutely appropriate to write randomly. In the same review, I will focus on two system utilities that cope with the task literally "with a bang" with all the information content and clarity - CrystalDiskMark and HD Tune.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is the most revered and sought-after program both in overclocking circles and among ordinary technical enthusiasts who are engaged in detailed tuning of the hardware base of their PCs, who want to get the most reliable and objective information about their drive.

The software installation is quick and painless. How to check disk speed with CrystalDiskMark?

The basic shape of the instrument is quite pretty and unsightly. First, we set the language to "Russian", so that in the future there will be no problems with access to the menu.

There are 4 different performance tests available on the main form:

Seq Q32T1 - sequential read/write with a queue depth of 32 and one pass

4K Q32T1 - Random Read/Write with 4K Block Size, Queue Depth 32 and Single Pass

Seq - sequential read/write. As a rule, this test is used by reviewers and technical specialists who are professionally involved in testing hardware.

4K is a random read/write with a block size of 4 KB and a queue depth of 1.

What is meant by abbreviations here? Q32T1 is the number of passes and the depth of the queue (can be set in the parameters). In turn, 4K is the size of the block under test, it can take other values ​​(depending on the parameters, application version, etc.)

The top button "All" initiates the immediate start of checking all tests in order of priority.

The Read and Write columns are responsible for reading and writing the measured data from the hard disk, respectively. At the top we see a strip of a pull-down menu (5, 1 Gib, C:\), providing additional information about the following options:

The first item is the number of checks (5 by default). Specifies the number of repetitions of measurements, according to the results of which the average value is displayed on the screen. It should be noted that this parameter has a significant impact on the objectivity of measurements, but at the same time takes a lot of time for measurements.

File size (by default - 1 Gib). Specifies the size of the file used for reading and writing during measurements.

Disk (C: 47% (63/133Gib) - provides the ability to select a tested disk (if your hard drive is divided into several logical devices).

Queue depth and number of passes can be changed in the options menu. To do this, go to the "Settings" item of the main menu and select the "Queue and threads" option here.

As a result, you will be taken to a form where you can change the given values.

For an ordinary user, the default parameters will be enough, and the number of passes should be left at 3-5 times.

Important note: the test disk, in order to obtain the most objective results, must not be completely filled, and the amount of unallocated space must be at least 15-20%. In particular, the developers recommend disabling all active applications for the duration of testing, in particular, this is related to torrents and other utilities that are demanding on system resources.

To run a test, click on one of the green buttons on the left, or on the topmost one to run all tests. Read and write metrics will be displayed informatively in the respective fields.

Which obtained values ​​are of most interest to us? The most interesting are the first and last lines, which are responsible for the results of testing operations for reading and writing 4K blocks. The reason for this is as follows: in the normal daily use of a PC, it is quite rare when working with a disk that sequential reading and writing of information is involved. Random sectors are processed much more often (approximately 80% of all operations). Therefore, you should not believe the often inflated numbers indicated by marketers in booklets and promotional notes.

There are very few additional options here, perhaps I have already described most of them. As you can see, the utility is incredibly simple, but it works effectively, does not make you wait long for the check operation to complete, and provides a detailed answer to the question: "How to check the speed of a disk?".

HD Tune

Although the official website has an available and paid version of the product (HD Tune Pro), we will focus on its free counterpart, which can be downloaded from the download page. So, how to check disk speed using the HD Tune system utility? Let's figure it out.

The application works in a slightly different way compared to CrystalDiskMark. After installing the program on the hard drive, we launch the application and see the main window. There are four tabs available here: Benchmark, Info, Health and Error Scan. If you turn to the Info and Health tabs, you can get detailed information about the modes supported by the hard disk and the presence of bad clusters in its structure, respectively. The Error Scan tab will scan the entire structure of the disk drive for health and reliability, immediately highlighting for you information about possible errors and bad cells, if any. This check is almost identical to the drive health check mechanism built into the operating system, so you will not find anything new for yourself here.

We are most interested in the “Benchmark” tab, because it is with its help that we will find out how fast our hard drive is and will be able to compare it with the indicators of the installed hardware SSD drive, that is, to conduct a full test of the disk speed.

Now it's time to translate the scales into Russian so that during the check you do not get confused which is which:

Transfer Rate (Minimum) - indicator of the minimum disk drive speed obtained as a result of the check (Mb / sec)

Transfer Rate (Maximum) - indicator of the maximum speed of the disk drive, obtained as a result of the test (Mb / sec)

Transfer Rate (Average) - indicator of the average speed of the disk drive obtained as a result of the test (Mb / s)

Access Time - time spent on accessing file objects (the lower the value, the better) (milisec)

Burst Rate - peak speed of the interface, i.e. limit (Mb/s)

CPU Usage - percentage of CPU resources used (%).

We go to the “Benchmark” tab and press the “Start” button to initialize and start the testing procedure, after selecting the disk we need from the list of available ones. It is important to understand that during testing, you should disable the most active, CPU-consuming software products: antiviruses, firewalls, torrents, browser downloads.

The verification process has now begun. If the system receives a load, the data on the graph will change synchronously and show up-to-date information. When enough time has passed (say, 5-10 minutes), the routine will be interrupted, and we will be able to visually study the information received. There is no need to stop the process manually, everything will happen automatically.

What data will we get from the graph to determine how to find out the disk speed? First of all, the minimum, maximum and average data transfer rates. These readings are comparable to similar indicators obtained in CrystalDiskMark. Next, the yellow dots represent disk access times. Since the program accesses various logical devices and tracks on the disk, the dot readings are set arbitrarily, telling us about the spread of dots throughout the drive structure.

For a snack, there remains the rate of data packet transfer between different areas of the drive (burst rate) and the percentage of processor load during data transfer. Next, we will compare the readings with the SSD by selecting it from the corresponding list at the top of the form and running the testing routine again.

On the software market, you can also find such products as HD Speed ​​and FC Test, but in terms of their functionality they are significantly inferior to the tools we have described above.

Now you know how to check disk speed using one of our software products. Using this method, you can tell for sure if your computer needs a disk drive upgrade, if it has sufficient requirements to get rid of the drive's role as a bottleneck (say, if it has a SATA 3.0 bus and support for SMART technology), and guarantees whether it's an increase in the speed of your workhorse.

In the article, we will consider the work of utilities with the help of which a hard disk speed test is carried out. With their help, it will be possible to compare results for the same data stores and get an accurate picture of the performance of the hard drive. We do not consider details regarding the comparison of SSD solid-state drives that claim to replace the “pancakes” that dominate the HDD market - only tests. So I am building the article in the following parts:

• Performance: does it all depend on the disk?
• Free Speed ​​Test Programs
• - test and compare

introductory

So, one of the most important devices inside a computer is a hard drive. Still - Windows is installed there. And as a result, we can get a situation where the performance of other components against the backdrop of slow storage data just goes blank. Dozens gigabyte of RAM and more pair latest generation CPU cores “under the hood”? - but slow disk equates your build to the average, despite a lot of money spent. That is why, once "reseeding" on the SSD, the user is unlikely to return to the HDD, albeit neglecting the costs. But how obvious is this? In general, when considering a future purchase in relation to a hard drive, the user has this picture in front of his eyes:

Let's put the problems right away: disk performance in Windows is not determined EXCLUSIVELY by the speed of rotation of HDD pancakes or the amount of memory of SSD chips. The operation of the storage before the system starts and during the system session includes factors such as:

• characteristics
• type of connection (cable or without)
• cable type (more on that later)
• controller drivers and others.

So how do you know if everything is in order with the performance of your drive or if some additional tweaks are needed? It's time for a hard drive test, and I'll present a few programs that run under the latest versions of Windows with various types of storage. Working condition only one thing: during the ongoing test, the user's access to Windows is reduced to a minimum. In addition, many programs have the same characteristics and testing conditions, which you should familiarize yourself with right away:

• Sequential – Sequenceshell- (also seq or linear) is the speed at which the disk can read and write a block of data in the form of large files. Suitable for disks with large amounts of stored information or game partitions, where the average file size is not lower than megabyte. Sequence tests will show the maximum write / read speed that the drive can achieve when working EXACTLY with good quality movies and games.
• 4K – For-Key- hard disk speed test as opposed to the previous one. Its task is to determine the speed of access to small files. And this, let me remind you, is extremely important for the files of the OS itself. High results in 4K tests show the high speed of data exchange between the drive and Windows. This means that the system from such a disk boots and runs faster, so when choosing storage to speed up work with the OS itself, good 4K test results are a priority.

Hard Drive Speed ​​Test: Free Software

HD Touch

The last version known to me is in the form (only in 32-bit version), and the utility is no longer supported. Worked perfectly in Windows XP, but in recent versions of Windows it refuses to check disks.

However, you can risk running the program in Compatibility mode(I INSTALL such programs in this mode):

In Windows 10, you can also run tests:

sata disk in a laptop - from the connector to the controller

IDE drive via cable

SATA drive via cable

There are 2 types of testing available in the program: with the recording of short (8 Mb) and long (32 Mb) blocks. As you can see, the overall speed of data exchange with the disk according to the results of several tests is highlighted in red. On the right, a block with information on the average speed of reading data from the disk will be available ( average read), CPU usage for working with the disk ( CPU Utilization). As a result of the work, the once useful button is available graph data for comparison with the “ideal” specifications of hard drives. Unfortunately, it has long lost its relevance - the utility has been abandoned since 2004.

CrystalDiskMark

And this is one of the most popular hard drive speed tests. An elementary interface, large numbers and letters - well, how not to use it. Works with a considerable range of storages: it supports memory cards, flash drives, all types of hard drives. CrystalDiskMark it is simple to use: in the header we sequentially select the number of passes (I have 5 - the more, the more accurate the result), the test volume of the disk (I allocated for the test 4 GB space) and the disk itself, if there are several:

Click All(or for any other from the column) and wait for the results:

For SSD drives (the test did not get here) there is an additional option - writing data in a scatter or using 0 And 1 . This kind of test is worth trying “against” a disk with compression on controllers. sand force.

HD Tune

One of the most popular hard drive diagnostic and testing tools. However, like some of the analogues, the free version has not been updated by the creators for a long time. So against modern hybrids and some SSDs, it's a bit underperforming in the speed test results. I have a free version in the archive. Based on the results of the work, you can see the minimum, average and maximum disk read speeds, the average value of the storage access speed and the Breakthrough Rate Burst Rate– (best rate ) - the maximum speed (megabits / sec) that the disk can provide when exchanging data with the OS. The size of the blocks used can be changed from 512 bytes to 8 MB by changing the accuracy/speed of the test:

sata disk check results

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Clicking on the button Run, the results will open in a browser window (it is better not to touch the keyboard and mouse):

The results for me are disappointing in some respects:

In the same window, you can go a little lower and check the game settings for popular games and find out how well your build copes with them. As it turned out, it was better for me not to meddle there. Moreover, this is another story beyond the scope of the article.

A small free Windows-program CrystalDiskMark is designed to determine the speed of reading and writing hard drives - HDD, SSD, USB-drives. This is the simplest tool aimed at ordinary users. Two versions of the program are available on the official website of the program - the usual Standard Edition and the Shizuku Edition with an interface designed in the style of Japanese cartoons. Both editions are available for download in portable and regular versions. When installing the latter into the system, it is necessary to carefully follow the steps of the installation wizard in order to avoid installing unnecessary programs into the system along the way.

Having launched CrystalDiskMark, in a small window of the program we will see a table where the test results will be shown in the future. At the top of the window, we will find individual configurable parameters, these are the initial data for starting testing. The program does not detect disks, flash drives, other drives as integral devices. Before starting testing, in the right corner of the window, you must select the letter of the HDD, SSD or connected flash drive.

The drop-down list with numerical indicators is the reading and writing cycles of a special test file, which will be temporarily placed by the CrystalDiskMark program on the disk partition or flash drive under study. The size of this test file is selected from the drop-down list next to it. The preset 5 cycles and the test file size of 1 GB are the optimal parameters for testing the HDD. These parameters can be changed to reduce the number of read and write cycles up to 3 times in order not to expose the SSD to wear and tear (or, for example, to reduce the testing time). The file size can be changed to a smaller one and selected, for example, 100 MB.

CrystalDiskMark provides 4 types of tests. The “All” button in the upper left corner of the window launches all tests for reading and writing data provided by the program. The buttons below are the buttons for launching each of the tests separately. The "Seq Q32T1" and "Seq" buttons run tests of sequential reading and writing data in one stream with a disk queue depth of 32 and 1, respectively. The "4K Q32T1" and "4K" buttons are designed for tests of random reading and writing blocks with a size of 4 Kb with disk queue indicators of 32 and 1, respectively. All these tests will show the average speed of reading and writing data in their conditions. The read speed will be displayed in the "Read" column, and the write speed in the "Write" column.

If there is a question in checking the average speed of reading and writing data promised by the manufacturer or seller of the hard drive, you need to focus on the results of the Seq and Seq Q32T1 tests. Sequential read and write test scores are usually specified in hard drive specifications based on the principle of presenting the most advantageous product data.

If necessary, the test results can be exported to a text format - sent to the clipboard or saved to disk in a TXT file.

Hi admin! Decided to buy a solid state drive the other day! I came to a computer store and I told the seller:

Sell ​​me the fastest SSD!

and they answer me:

Here you go, Kingston HyperX 3K (120GB, SATA-III) 555MB/s speed, superb SSD, you can't go faster.

Prove it!

Apparently they wanted to sell me this SSD so much that they installed it on a computer and ran a test in the CrystalDiskMark program, then showed the test result, here is a screenshot:

The sequential read speed is 541 MB / s and the write speed is 493 MB / s, I even took a picture of it on my phone.

In short, I bought this SSD, came home, connected it to my computer, then downloaded and ran the "CrystalDiskMark" program and ran the same test, but the result was worse!

489MB/s sequential read and 127MB/s write. Why?

In the store, the test was carried out on a computer with an Intel® Core™ i5 processor and 4GB of memory, but my computer is more powerful and is based on an Intel® Core™ i7 processor and has 8GB of memory.

Explain to the admin what the catch is, otherwise I won’t sleep, after all, this SSD costs 3 and a half rubles.

Hi all! Yes, this can be friends, you just need to be able to use the CrystalDiskMark program. Now I will show you everything.

• Note: You may be interested in our other SSD articles

The SSD test will be carried out in CrystalDiskMark 3 0 3

The program can be downloaded from the official website http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

CrystalDiskMark tests our SSD like this:

All: All 4 tests run (Seq, 512K, 4K, 4K QD32);

Seq: Sequential write/read test (block size= 1024Kb);

512K: Random write/read test (block size = 512Kb);

4K: Random write/read test (block size = 4Kb);

4K QD32: Random write/read test (block size = 4Kb, queue depth = 32) for NCQ and AHCI;

Final result.

First, properly test your SSD or any other hard drive! The fastest SSD will read and write information to the area filled with zeros alone. To do this, in CrystalDiskMark, in the file menu, select File->Test Data->All 0x0000 (Fill).

I also have this SSD Kingston HyperX 3K (120 GB, SATA-III) and now I will do a simple test.

In the operating system, the SSD drive is under the letter D:, which means that in the program settings we select the letter D: and click

The Sequential Read/Write test of our SSD begins!

In a minute we get the result. Sequential read/write speed 543 MB/s (read), 507 MB/s (write)

Now we test differently. File->Test Data->Default (Random)

A minute later, we get a result that is not at all the same as when testing with the All 0x0000 (Fill) option. Sequential read/write speed 499 MB/s (read), 149 MB/s (write)

It is also important for the good performance of the SSD to properly connect it to your motherboard. All SSDs have a high speed SATA 3.0 (6 Gb/s) interface and your motherboard probably has these connectors. For example, my ASUS P8Z77-V PRO motherboard has four SATA 6 Gb / s ports and they are appropriately labeled SATA 6G, so we connect the SSD according to the marking.

To connect a SATA 6 Gb / s SSD interface, use the native SATA 6 Gb / s data cable!

Whatever speed the manufacturer indicates in the characteristics of their SSD, the user always wants to check everything in practice. But it is impossible to find out how close the speed of the drive is to the declared one without the help of third-party programs. The most that can be done is to compare how quickly files are copied on a solid state drive with similar results on a magnetic drive. In order to find out the real speed, you need to use a special utility.

SSD Speed ​​Test

As a solution, we will choose a simple program called . It has a Russified interface and is very easy to use. So let's get started.

Immediately after launch, the main window will open in front of us, on which all the necessary settings and information are located.

Before starting the test, let's set a couple of parameters: the number of checks and the file size. The measurement accuracy will depend on the first parameter. By and large, five checks, which are set by default, are enough to get correct measurements. But if you want to get more accurate information, you can set the maximum value.

The second parameter is the size of the file that will be read and written during the tests. The value of this parameter will also affect both the measurement accuracy and the test execution time. However, in order not to shorten the life of the SSD, you can set the value of this parameter to 100 MB.

After setting all the parameters, we proceed to the selection of the disk. Everything is simple here, open the list and select our solid state drive.

Now you can go directly to testing. The CrystalDiskMark application provides five tests:

• Seq Q32T1– testing of sequential writing/reading of a file with a depth of 32 per stream;
• 4K Q32T1– testing of random writing/reading of 4 kilobyte blocks with a depth of 32 per stream;
• Seq– testing of sequential write/read with depth 1;
• 4K– testing random write/read with depth 1.

Each of the tests can be run separately, just click on the green button of the desired test and wait for the result.

You can also do a full test by clicking on the All button.

In order to get more accurate results, it is necessary to close all (if possible) active programs (especially torrents), and it is also desirable that the disk be no more than half full.

Since the random method of reading / writing data is most often used in everyday use of a personal computer (in 80%), we will be more interested in the results of the second (4K Q32t1) and fourth (4K) tests.

Now let's analyze the results of our test. An ADATA SP900 128 GB drive was used as an "experimental". As a result, we got the following:

• with the sequential method, the drive reads data at a speed 210-219 Mbps;
• recording with the same method is slower - only 118 Mbps;
• reading with a random method with a depth of 1 occurs at a speed 20 Mbps;
• recording with a similar method - 50 Mbps;
• read and write with depth 32 - 118 Mbps and 99 Mbps, respectively.

It is worth paying attention to the fact that reading / writing is performed at high speeds only with files whose size is equal to the size of the buffer. Those that have more buffer will both be read and copied more slowly.

So, with the help of a small program, we can easily evaluate the speed of an SSD and compare it with the one indicated by the manufacturers. By the way, this speed is usually overestimated, and with the help of CrystalDiskMark you can find out exactly how much.