CrystalDiskMark program: testing the read and write speed of hard drives. How to check disk speed - testing the performance of SSD and HDD drives

In general, the question is quite interesting. It’s not that it was difficult to find out the speed of a hard drive, but let’s first define the terminology. What exactly do we want to know? Most often, “hard drive speed” refers to the speed of reading and transferring data from the disk. In principle, this is enough for most users. However, keep in mind that these are not the only “speeds” that can be measured on an HDD. By the way, there are even several types of transmission and reading speeds, but more on that below.

Why do we need to know the speed of reading and transferring information on a hard drive? This can be useful if your computer's performance slows down. Could the hard drive be the culprit of such misbehavior on the PC? Yes, as much as you like! But in order to establish the fact of a drop in the speed of the hard drive, we need to compare it with something, that is, know the initial speed of the device. Therefore, I will tell you how to find out the speed of your PC's hard drive.

We will use a simple program called . Please note that I am using the free version of the application. For our purposes it will be more than enough. Actually, the utility itself is designed for testing hard drives. Using this application you can check: data transfer speed, data access time, disk temperature, processor load level and much more. Plus, HD Tune will give us information about the firmware version, serial number, total volume of the hard drive and its cache, as well as support for all kinds of technologies on our HDD. The utility also has a function to check the disk for errors, which is useful for diagnostics.

I won’t focus on the installation process. It's as simple as three kopecks. After installation, launch the program. We see something like this window. The interface is simple, but I will still give some explanations.

The drop-down list (circled in red in the screenshot) is the disks in your system. If there are several disks, then select the one that we want to check right now. Next to the list, the program shows the disk temperature in real time. Next to the temperature there are several more buttons that allow you to save test results, including in the form of screenshots.

Below we see four tabs. There are a lot of interesting things in these tabs. However, for now we are only interested in the first tab, which is called “Benchmark”. It contains the very speed test that we need. In addition to speed, after testing we will be able to obtain information about response time and processor load. By the way, please note that there are several disk “speeds” that we will measure here. They are displayed in boxes on the right side of the interface. I didn’t find a Russification of the program, so I’ll be a little Russifier myself.

Transfer Rate Minimum is the minimum data transfer rate for a given hard drive for the entire test period (MB/sec).

Transfer Rate Maximum is the maximum data transfer rate for a given hard drive over the entire test period (MB/sec). This is what disc manufacturers often write on their advertisements, however, it is not at all the most significant indicator. The minimum and maximum speeds may differ significantly, but this does not always indicate technical problems.

Transfer Rate Average is the average data transfer rate for a given hard drive over the entire test period (MB/sec). A useful indicator, but in isolation from the rest it also doesn’t say much.

Access Time is the time it takes to access files on the disk (ms). Theoretically, the lower it is, the better.

Burst Rate is the maximum (peak) data transfer rate in the interface used in this HDD (MB/sec). It is also often passed off as the real disk speed, but real devices are not always able to achieve it.

CPU Usage - this parameter reflects the use of CPU resources (%)

In order to start testing (find out the speed of the hard drive), you need to click the "Start" button. After this, you need to leave your PC alone and wait until the test is completed. The test needs to be run by stopping as many processes as possible that use the computer's resources, and especially its disk. So you won't be able to watch a movie during the test, at least not if you want to get objective results. During testing, disable anti-virus programs, firewall, all downloads, including torrent programs (required), etc.

In the end, you'll get a fairly objective picture of your drive's data transfer speed. In addition to HD HD Tune, I can also recommend the program. It is a little less visual, but provides about the same amount of data. It's also free.

This utility is designed to conduct speed tests and read-write disks - HDD and, you can even test USB flash drives. The program is very simple, and also free, aimed more at ordinary users, but it is also suitable for professionals. You can download CrystalDiskMark from this site: http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en . There is an installation version, that is, with an extension file.exe, and a portable version, which does not need to be installed on your computer. You can choose a program that weighs 3.0 Mb.

How to check hard drive speed?

Launch the utility, a window will quickly open in which we see not many elements, but a lot that is not clear. It is clear that the fields with numbers will indicate the results of the check; on the left there are buttons that we can press. The tabs also allow you to select some values ​​and disks that will be tested.

Do not rush to immediately proceed to the check; first select the disk, and then select other values ​​​​in the drop-down tabs.

The first tab, where just numbers shows the read/write cycles of the test file, which will be created by CrystalDiskMark and placed on the disk being tested by the utility. The next tab determines the size of this file. The default is five cycles with a file size of 1Gb - for a regular hard drive these are normal parameters. In the case of an SSD, there is a possibility of rapid wear of the disk, since solid-state drives are very sensitive to frequent operations on them. Therefore, in the program parameters, the number of cycles can be set to 3, and the size of the test file to 100 MB.

Now let's look at the names of the buttons on the left and what they do.

At the moment, the version of the CrystalDiskMark utility is 5.1.2 and there are 5 points, their purpose is as follows:

• All– the parameter runs all the tests that are available in the program, that is, it is the same as pressing all the buttons on the left;
• Seq Q32T1 and button Seq– sequential read and write test with a depth of 32 in 1 stream;
• 4K Q32T1 and button 4K– this parameter runs a random read/write test in 4 KB blocks.

Thus, during the test, the program will show the average reading and writing speeds of the drive. The program has 2 columns where Read- reading, and Write– recording, we look at them after checking.

If you wish, you can copy the scan results and save them anywhere. To do this, click on the tab "File" and select item "Copy" or "Save".

Conclusion

In fact, you should pay more attention to timings 2 and 4, since in normal disk use sequential read and write processes are used less often, random sequences are most often used. Therefore, if they tell you about large read and write values, then this is most likely a lie, but this does not always happen.

As an alternative, you can use other programs for checking disks, for example, HD Tune, I will also try to write about it.

Since computer technology is now improving every day, I am of the opinion that the user simply must know or at least be able to determine the parameters of the hardware installed on his device. Among these parameters is the speed of the hard drive. To clarify it, there are many programs, some of which I will introduce you to.

Hard drive speed test programs

To check the speed in this program, in the Drive field you need to select the drive you need. This can be either the entire hard drive or its individual logical partitions. In this case, you can start from a certain position on this disk. It is indicated in the corresponding Position (%) field, this is quite useful if the disk being checked is large. In the Mode field you can select the mode you want to test. There are 4 of them in total: Read, write, write+read, write+read+check. You also have the opportunity to test the peak speed of the hard drive and write the test results to a text file, which can be useful if any errors occur. To do this, you need to check the boxes next to the appropriate fields.

After selecting all the desired options, simply click the Start button. You will see the test begin and a speed graph appear. Below it will also be displayed information about the current speed and the average during testing.

What is noteworthy is that if you want to start a new test (for example, another section), the results of the previous one do not disappear and the graph continues, which is convenient for comparing results.

Download HD Speed ​​- http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=20

This program has a Russian version, but the simplicity of the interface allows you to use the English version of the utility.

To test speed using this program, you first need to select the number of write and read cycles and the size of the file being tested. The most optimal options would be 5 and 1 GiB, respectively. Next, select the disk for the test from the drop-down list. After this, select the All button.

Although, very often, it will be enough to confine ourselves to checking sequential writing and reading (SeqQ32T1 button). After checking, the program will give you the results of the speed of reading and writing to the disk (respectively, these are the Read and Write columns).

Download CrystalDiskMark - http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

Unlike the first two, this utility is not free.
To test using this program, you must select the Testing tab. The window that opens will open a list of disks available for testing. In it you need to select the hard drive you need. There is no way to test logical drives separately, but it is worth noting that the test time is somewhat faster than in the first two programs. After selecting the disk, you need to click the Start button, which is located slightly above the list.

Testing will begin, the results of which will be displayed in the form of a graph, and upon completion, the program will display the values ​​of the average, minimum and maximum disk reading speed.

If you are interested in a more detailed picture, then refer to the graph, on the vertical axis of which the speed values ​​​​are plotted directly, and on the horizontal axis – the verification stage.

Download Ashampoo HDD Control 2 - https://www.ashampoo.com/ru/rub/pin/0365/system-software/hdd-control-2

Thus, we got acquainted with three programs with which you can check the speed of your hard drive. In fact, there are many more of them; I have described those that, in my opinion, are convenient and easy to use. But still, if they, for example, do not suit you in some way, you can always turn to other utilities.

Good afternoon dear readers, today I want to touch on this topic, what is HDD spindle speed, how to determine it, and understand which speed is good and which is not. I think this will be of interest to novice storage system engineers, since the performance of storage systems will depend on understanding this topic, namely how much your disk array can carry without brakes or accidents. When I started my career, I lacked this information in the Russian-language segment and that everything was structured, so I ask you to love and favor me.

Spindle speed

Each of us wants all of our services and equipment to work quickly and to be installed in our data storage systems; not everyone has the opportunity to install fast SSD drives, and hard drives remain the only solution. When evaluating the performance of hard drives, the most important characteristic is data transfer speed. At the same time, a number of factors influence the speed and overall performance:

• The first factor is through which interface you connect the hard drive, your choice is SATA/IDE/SCSI/SAS, it is logical that each of them has its own data transfer speed. SCSI can transfer data up to 80 megabytes/sec, IDE latest versions can support data transfer speeds up to 133 MB/s, SATA up to 6 Gbit/sec, SAS up to 12 Gbit.
• Hard drive cache or buffer size. Increasing the buffer size allows you to increase the data transfer rate.
• Support for NCQ, TCQ and other performance improvement algorithms
• Disk capacity, the more data you can write, the more time it takes to read the information.
• Density of information on the plates.
• And even the file system affects the speed of data exchange.

But there is another factor that affects the performance of the screws and this is the rotation speed of the hard drive spindle. If you take two identical HDDs, but with different spindle speeds, you will see a difference in performance, and a significant one at that

HDD device

Let's look at the physical structure of hard drives to understand what parts it consists of.

• Reading head
• Solenoid drive
• Spindle
• Plates
• Nutrition
• Connection interface

• Read/write head
• Permanent magnet
• Positioner rotating frame
• Head unit preamplifier switch

What is a spindle

A hard drive is a set of one or more sealed disk-shaped plates coated with a layer of ferromagnetic material and read heads in one housing. The plates are driven by a spindle (rotating shaft). The hard drive platters are fixed to the spindle at a strictly defined distance. When rotating the platters, the distance must be such that the read heads can read and write to the disk, but do not touch the surface of the platters.

The spindle motor must ensure stable rotation of the magnetic plates for thousands of hours for the disk to function properly. It is not surprising that sometimes disk problems are associated with a jammed spindle, and are not at all errors in the file system.

The motor is responsible for rotating the platters, and this allows the hard drive to operate. Due to the lack of contact, the hard drive can be rewritten an average of 100 thousand times. Also, the lifespan of the disk is affected by the hermetic housing (hermetic zone), thanks to which a space is created inside the HDD housing, cleared of dust and moisture.

This is what the spindles look like; each manufacturer may have a slightly different appearance. These are the spindles from Samsung screws.

or here's another selection.

spindle speed, or spindle rotation speed in Russian, determines how quickly the platters rotate during normal operation of the hard drive. It is measured in RpM, that is, revolutions per minute. RpM speed will determine how fast your computer will work, namely how quickly the computer can receive data from the hard drive.

How many times have I seen crappy laptops that had 4 GB of RAM, had an Intel core i3 or even i5 processor, but had a damn hdd with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm, and it was complete trash, such screws need to be pulled out immediately and installing ssd otherwise it would not work

The time it takes for the head unit to move to the requested track/cylinder is called search time (seek latency or delay) . After the read heads move to the desired track/cylinder, we must wait for the plates to rotate so that the desired sector is under the head - this rotational latency time. And this is a direct function of the spindle speed. That is, the faster the spindle speed, the less rotation delay.

The general delays during search and rotation delays determine the speed of data access. In many programs for estimating hdd speed, this will be the access to data time parameter. You can read more about s.m.a.r.t indicators using the link on the left.

Impact of hard drive spindle speed

Hard drives come in two formats: LFF and SFF; to put it in a nutshell, one has a 2.5-inch format, and the other 3.5. The 2.5 format is most often used either in servers or laptops, and the second is also used in servers and regular system units.

If you look at the average speed of standard 3.5" hard drives, then this is a spindle speed of 7200 rpm. The average half-turn time (Avg. Rotational Latency) for such drives is 4.2 ms. These drives usually have an average seek time of about 8.5 ms, which gives an average time data access of about 12.7 ms.

There are disks that have a rotation speed of magnetic plates of 10,000 revolutions per minute. This reduces the average rotation latency to 3ms. Raptors also have smaller diameter plates, which reduces the average search time to ~5.5 ms. The resulting average data access time is approximately 8.5 ms.

There are several SCSI models (such as the Seagate Cheetah) that have a spindle speed of 15,000 rpm, and even smaller platters. Average Rotational Latency is 2 ms (60 sec / 15,000 RPM / 2), average seek time is 3.8 ms, and average data access time is 5.8 ms.

High spindle speed drives have low seek times and Rotational Latencies, even with random access. Hard drives with a spindle speed of 5600 and 7200 have lower performance.

However, when accessing data sequentially in large blocks, the difference will be insignificant, since there will be no delay in accessing data, so it is recommended to regularly defragment hard drives.

For 2.5 colleagues, the speed also jumps from 5400 to 15,000 rpm.

Determining the rotation speed of the hard drive spindle

Here I won’t open America for you; determining the rotation speed of the spindle of the hard drive is not only simple, but very simple, there are two options. If you have the opportunity to physically look at the label located on the disk, then you can see the RPM indicator in these examples is 7200RPM.

If you have a hard drive in a device or server, then we will look at the rotation speed of the spindle of the hard drive in special programs, of which there are a bunch, I can recommend

• crystalmark
• aida64
• speccy

Of course, the higher the spindle speed, the faster the disk, but there is also a downside to the coin: as the rotation speed of the plates increases, the disk heats up more and becomes noisier. This can be offset by WD IntelliPower technology, which reduces power consumption and noise by reducing spindle speed. And the loss of performance is partially compensated by optimizing caching algorithms. HGST has a similar technology to reduce energy consumption called CoolSpin.

conclusions

I think you are once again convinced that, if possible, you need to switch to solid-state drives, as they have many advantages

• Do not heat up
• There are no mechanical parts, if it falls, nothing will happen to it
• The speed is many times faster
• More durable
• But unfortunately they have a smaller volume and are still more expensive, although this limit decreases every year.

Typically, the speed of the hard drive is checked using traditional Windows Explorer. To do this, simply move a fairly large file from one disk to another and Explorer shows the recording speed. However, this information is more than modest and in most cases it is not enough, so we will look at more advanced methods for checking the speed of the hard drive.

Checking the speed of your hard drive using Crystal Disk Mark

Crystal Disk Mark is a free program to check the read and write speed of your hard drive. It has a minimum of settings, so it’s not at all difficult to understand the interface. You can download the program itself from the official website.

Be sure to download the latest version of the installer .exe so that you have the latest version of the program. After installing and launching the program for the first time, you will see this window:

Crystal Disk Mark Interface

I’ll immediately give a short explanation of what is needed here.

In the top line, opposite the All button, you select how many tests you need to run, what size file to use for testing, and which disk or disk partition you want to test.

Left column

In the left column you select what type of test you want to run.

• All - run all possible tests (Seq, 512 KB, 4K, 4K QD 32)
• Seq is short for sequential. Conducts a sequential test of the speed of reading/writing to disk blocks of 1024 KB in size
• 512 KB - will test the speed of reading/writing to disk blocks of 512 KB in random order (inconsistently, like last time)
• 4 KB - will test the speed of reading/writing to disk blocks of 4 KB in size in random order
• 4 KB QD32 - will test the speed of reading/writing to the disk of 4 KB blocks in random order with a queue depth of 32 (for NCQ in AHCI)

What is NCQ

NCQ, for those who don't know, is a hardware command queue setup used to speed up AHCI mode. And AHCI, in turn, is one of the modes in which your SATA port can operate. Using the SATA port, you connect hard drives to the motherboard.

In general, a SATA port can operate in two modes. In IDE emulation mode and in AHCI mode. IDE emulation mode is a transitional option from IDE to AHCI. The IDE has long been obsolete. It is much slower than AHCI and was used back when hard drives were connected to the motherboard using impressively sized cables. (90s - early 2000s)

However, many operating systems from the Windows family, up to and including Windows Vista, still do not support the AHCI data transfer mode. This forces many Windows XP users, who are immensely faithful to their OS, to dance with a tambourine in attempts to make Windows XP friends with AHCI.