We use computers in our everyday life. Not only in computers but also other devices, the feature about these devices that comes to our mind first is the speed. The speed of the disk is very important because nobody wants a slow device. So, on our computers, you are very curious about the speed of the disk. So, it is very common and necessary to test the speed of the disk.
There are many available tools and methods for testing the speed of the disk. The tools enable you to check read-write speed of hard drive; the read and write speed of the disk is in megabytes per second. According to your windows and version of your computer, you have to select the proper method or tool to test the speed.
Table of Contents
What Is Disk Speed Test
Testing disk speed, power supply, or other units of a PC is great for clearing out issues and make room for improvements. There are several categories of speed in a disk, both in SSD or HDD speed test. The measuring scale os the speeds also vary. The rotational speed is measured in revolution per minute(rpm). The lowest measured hard drive speed test is 4200rpm. Above 15k rpm is not applicable to flash memory.
Another speed that is measured in a disk is interface speed. The interface speed is the speed that is responsible to send the data to the disk controller.
Besides, the sequential and random speed of a disk is also measured. The hard drive speed or reading and writing speed of a disk plays a significant role. There are four speeds you should care about. Sequential read, sequential write, random read, and random write. Many tools are available to test these speeds of a disk.
How to Test Disk Speed on Windows 10
On Windows 10, you can easily test the speed of the disk. Sometimes it is very important to check the speed of the hard disk drive to ensure that the disk is working as advertised. There is some software for checking the speed of the disk, but the most popular software is CrystalDiskMark. The methods of the disk speed test in Windows 10 with this software are given below:
- First, you have to download the CrystalDiskMark on your windows 10.
- Then, you have to install this by clicking the install button.
- After installing it, you have to search for CrystalDiskMark for the search engine and open the app.
- You have to select the number of runs by using the first drop-down menu on the left. For a more accurate result, you have to decrease the selection of the default number.
- Then, you have to select the file size that the app will use from the second drop=down menu to benchmark the disk.
- From the third drop=down menu, you have to select a disk that you want to test.
- Finally, click the All button.
When you click the “All button” option, it will automatically run the available tests. It includes sequential read and writes tests and three different 4KiB random tests. You can click the “green button” to test a single test.
After completing the steps, the tool will run on the disk for a few minutes, and then you can see the result in megabytes/seconds. That is how you can do disk speed test for windows.
How to Test Disk Speed on Windows 8
You can easily test the speed of the disk on Windows 8. It takes very simple steps to check the speed of the disk. The steps are given below:
- First, you have to open the command prompt on the below of the lest corner of your computer.
- Then, you have to click start.
- In the search box, you have to type “cmd”.
- You have to right-click on the “cmd” and run as administrator.
- In the command prompt window, you have to type winset disk -drive d.
Here, d is the disk that you want to test.
By following these steps, you can easily test the speed of any disk on windows 8.
How to Test Disk Speed on Mac
Mac is one of the fastest devices we use every day. But if you want to test the speed of your mac computer, there are available some tools and methods for this purpose. The steps are very easy and fast. So, how to check disk speed in MAC? The method of testing the speed of your mac is given below:
- First, you have to connect the external drive to your mac. The external drive can be USB, Thunderbolt, or firmware, etc. You can format your mac to be Mac compatible for the best result.
- Then, you have to download the DiskSpeedTest from the mac play store and after downloading it, you have to launch the app properly.
- Once you get the app, you have to click the gear button in the middle and then you have to choose Select target Drive. You can also do the work bu pulling down the File menu and choose the same option and select the external drive to test.
- You have to choose Start to begin the running test and you have to let it run for a few minutes.
- After that, the result will be shown up of the disk speed test on the right side under the section “How fast” and it will also show the speed of reading and writing of the particular disk.
Top Free Tools for Hard Disk Speed Test
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD storage device benchmark tool. This hand drive enables you to measure the sequential and random speed of reading and writing. This tool checks the speed of the disk very rapidly. It measures not only the sequential speed but also measures the random speed of 512kb, 4 kb, and select text data.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test Windows
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test for Windows operating system 10 makes your work easy and simple when you want to test the speed of the disk. It also certifies your disk performance to work with high-quality video. To test the speed of the disk, you have to simply click the start button and the tool will just write test your disk by using large blocks of data. Then, it will show the result. The tool will continuously test reads and writes from the spinning disk so that it is possible to evaluate both performances over time.
AmorphousDiskMark
This tool measures storage read or write performance in MB/s and IOPS. This tool is designed for measuring the megabytes per second and also the input/output operations per second. It displays the result in the main window. This tool features mainly four types of tests and each feature has a different kind of data block. The test interval is about 0 seconds to 10 minutes. The test size can be 50 Mib,100 Mib, 500 Mib, 1 Gib, 2 Gib, 4 Gib, 8 Gib, 16 Gib, or 32 Gib.
Parkdale
You can cleck the write and read speed from your harddisks, cdrom devices, and network servers. This measure is done in Kilobyte, Megabyte, or even Gigabyte per second. You can easily test the speed with a single click by this tool. This tool not only shows the sequential read and write access speed but also the random access speed by 4KB blocks and 32 concurrent threads. You cannot find any Linux version of this software.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
This is an advanced tool that enables to assess the read and write performance of HD and SSD. This tool also allows you to monitor and check the response time of the machinery. It helps you to view the system information collected using Windows Management Instrumentation. This tool is developed software that provides the most comprehensive and detailed information.
Disk Utility Benchmark Tool
There is some benchmark tool to test the speed of a disk or hard drive rpm. Some disk performance test tools are given below:
- ATTO Disk Benchmark for Disk Performance Test
In the computer industry, ATTO is one of the best manufacturing storage and network connectivity products. This tool has created the disk benchmark as a portable tool to measure the performance of the storage system. This tool tests the speed of the hard disk and solid-state drives.
- HD Tune
HD Tune is one of the most well-known tools of benchmarking and diagnostic tests for the hard disk drives or ssd drive. This tool measures the performance of the disk by a benchmark test and the result is shown in a graph. It measures the speed of transfer data, burst rate, access time, and CPU usage.
- Roadkil’s Disk Speed
Another benchmark tool is Roadkil’s Disk Speed that does the disk read write speed test or ssd speed test. This test is very simple and small. This tool not only tests the disk speed but also provides details about transfer rates for linear and random reads. It has another feature that provides the addition of product information. This works great for comparing different hard drives.
Conclusion
As we can see, testing the speed of a disk is very necessary. The tools available for checking the speed of a disk also provide some additional features. These speed measuring tools are very efficient and easy to use. You can also test the speed of your disk by some manual methods. So, do you still have any questions on how to test hard drive speed? If any, feel free to comment.
