Check the speed of the ssd drive. How can you check the speed of your hard drive?

Hello dear friends! Artem Yushchenko is with you.

SATA1 standard – has a transfer speed of up to 150Mb/s
SATA2 standard – has a transfer speed of up to 300Mb/s
SATA3 standard – has a transfer speed of up to 600Mb/s
I am often asked why, when I test the speed of my drive (and the drive, for example, has a SATA2 interface and the motherboard has a port of the same standard), the speed is far from 300MB/s and not more.

In fact, the disk speed even of the SATA1 standard does not exceed 75MB/s. Its speed is usually limited by mechanical parts. Such as the spindle speed (7200 per minute for home computers), and also the number of platters in the disk. The more there are, the longer the delays in writing and reading data will be.

Therefore, in essence, it does not matter which interface of the traditional hard drive you use, the speed will not exceed 85 Mb/s.

However, I do not recommend using IDE standard drives in modern computers because they are already quite slower than SATA2. This will affect the performance of writing and reading data, which means there will be discomfort when working with large amounts of data.
Recently, a new SATA3 standard has appeared, which will be relevant for disks based on solid-state memory. We will talk about them later.
However, one thing is clear: modern traditional SATA drives, due to their mechanical limitations, they have not even developed the SATA1 standard yet, but SATA3 has already appeared. That is, the port provides speed but not disk.
However, each new SATA standard still brings some improvements, and with large volumes of information they will make themselves felt in good quality.

For example, the function is constantly being improved - Native Command Queuing (NCQ), a special command that allows you to parallelize read-write commands, for greater performance than the SATA1 and IDE interfaces cannot boast of.
The most remarkable thing is that the SATA standard, or rather its versions, are compatible with each other, which gives us monetary savings. That is, for example, a SATA1 drive can be connected to motherboard with SATA2 and SATA3 standard connectors and vice versa.
Not long ago, the market for new storage devices, the so-called SSDs, began to develop (let me remind you that traditional hard drives are designated as HDD).

SSD is nothing more than flash memory (not to be confused with flash drives, SSD is tens of times faster than regular flash drives). These drives are quiet, heat up little and consume little energy. They support read speeds up to 270MB/s and write speeds up to 250-260MB/s. However they are very expensive. A 256 GB disk can cost up to 30,000 rubles. However, prices will gradually fall as the flash memory market develops.
However, the prospect of buying an SSD, for example 64GB, is very pleasant, because it works much faster than a regular disk on magnetic platters, which means you can install a system on it and get an increase in performance when loading the operating system and when working with a computer. Such a disc costs about 5–6 thousand rubles. I'm thinking about buying this myself.

These drives fully reveal the SATA2 and new interface They need SATA 3 like air than traditional drives. In the next six months, SSD drives will move to the SATA3 standard and will be able to demonstrate speeds of up to 560 MB/s in read operations.
Not long ago, I came across an IDE disk with a size of 40GB and was released more than 7 years ago (not mine, they gave it to me for repairs). I tested its speed characteristics and compared them with the SATA1 and SATA2 standards, since I myself have both SATA disks standards.

The measurements were carried out using the Crystal Disk Mark program, several versions. I found out that the accuracy of measurements from one version of the program to another is practically independent. The computer has 32 bit installed operating system Windows 7 Ultimate and Pentium 4 processor – 3 GHz. Tests were also carried out on a processor with two Core 2 Duo E7500 cores overclocked to clock frequency 3.53 GHz. (standard frequency 2.93 GHz). According to my observations, the speed of reading and writing data is not affected by the processor speed.

This is what a good old IDE disk looks like; disks of this standard are still sold.

This is how it connects IDE disk. Wide cable for data transmission. Narrow white – nutrition.

And this is what connecting SATA drives looks like – red data wires. And also in the photo you can see the IDE cable that connects to its connector.

Speed results:

IDE standard speed. It is equal to 41 MB for writing and the same amount for reading data. Next come lines on reading sectors of various sizes in a variety of sizes.

Read and write speed SATA1. 50 and 49 MB for read and write speeds, respectively.

Read and write speed for SATA2. 75 and 74 MB for reading and writing, respectively.

And lastly, I’ll show you the results of testing one of the 4 GB flash drives from the excellent company Transcend. For flash memory the result is not bad:

Conclusion: The SATA1 and SATA2 interfaces (which took first place in the test results) are most preferable for use in a desktop home computer.

Sincerely, Artyom Yushchenko.

To run a disk read/write speed test, run Command Prompt as an administrator. To do this, in Windows, click the "Start" button, in the list of programs, find the "Utility - Windows" section and in it the "Command Prompt" item. Right-click on it in the window that opens context menu select the sub-item "Advanced > Run as administrator" and confirm the action.

To run a predefined set of tests, enter the command:

Winsat disk

and press the "Enter" key. When this command completes, the results of the speed tests will be displayed in the console window.

We are interested in the following lines:

Disk Random 16.0 Read – reading speed of random 256 blocks of 16 KB in size (i.e. 4 MB of test data);
Disk Sequential 64.0 Read – reading speed of sequential 256 blocks of 64 KB in size (16 MB of test data);
Disk Sequential 64.0 Write – writing speed of sequential 256 blocks of 64 KB in size (16 MB of test data).

Also next to the speed results you can see the performance index of your disks, the same one that is displayed in the properties window Windows systems 7. For Windows 7 it will range from 1.0 to 7.9, and for Windows 8 and 10 it will range from 1.0 to 9.9.

Optionally, for more detailed testing, you can add the following parameters to the "winsat disk" command:

"-seq" or "-ran" – sequential or random read/write;
"-read" or "-write" – reading or writing;
"-n N" — physical disk number (N is a number). The default number is "0". Cannot be used with the "-drive" option;
"-drive X" – drive (X is a letter without a colon). By default, drive "C:" is tested. Cannot be used with the "-n" option;
"-count N" – number of iterations of the write/read test, where N is a number from 1 to 50 (default 1);
"-iocount N" – the number of test blocks that will be written/read during testing, where N is a number from 256 to 5000 (default 256);
"-seqsize N" – block size in bytes for the sequential write/read speed test, where N is a number from 65536 to 1048576 (default 65536);
"-ransize N" – block size in bytes for the random write/read speed test, where N is a number from 16384 to 1048576 (default 16384).

Other options for the "winsat disk" command can be found on the Microsoft TechNet website (in English).

Examples of use

The following command will run a preset set of read/write speed tests on drive "D:":

Winsat disk -drive d

Read speed test of sequential blocks on drive "D:":

Winsat disk -seq -read -drive d

Random block writing speed test on disk "D:":

Winsat disk -ran -write -drive d

Two iterations of the read speed test of 512 random blocks of 1 MB in size (1048576 bytes) on disk “D:” (i.e., in total, 2x512x1048576=1073741824 bytes=1 GB will be read):

Winsat disk -ran -read -drive d -count 2 -iocount 512 -ransize 1048576

Removable media test

You can also check the speed of removable media such as flash drives, memory cards, etc. with the “winsat disk” command. We do not recommend running the preset set of tests with the “winsat disk -drive X” command, since flash drives and memory cards work slower than the computer’s hard drive and the preset set of tests can take a very long time to complete. It will be more efficient to use the following commands:

Winsat disk -seq -read -drive X winsat disk -seq -write -drive X winsat disk -ran -read -drive X winsat disk -ran -write -drive X

where X is the letter of the removable drive.

You can also refine your data size and other testing parameters using the options listed above.

The article is devoted to analyzing the performance of solid-state drives and hard drives. There is already an article on our website that describes in detail the pros and cons of SSDs. But this time I would like to dwell specifically on comparing the speed characteristics of these devices and tell in detail how great the advantage of solid-state drives is.

Quite often you hear that the superiority of SSDs in performance is not so significant - “only” 3-4 times. For example, the maximum speed of advanced hard drives is approximately 160-170 MB/s, while an SSD can show about 550 MB/s. A simple calculation gives a difference of almost 3.5 times. However, the processes that occur when reading information from a medium are much more complex, and it is incorrect to directly compare maximum speeds.

Test results for Vertex 3 SSD and Seagate 3 TB HDD
(clickable)

Take a look at the benchmark results for the two devices using the popular CrystalDiskMark software. It will allow you to compare both types of drives under different operating modes. The first drive is an OCZ SSD called Vertex 3, which has very high performance. The second one is modern hard drive Seagate 3TB capacity with very high specifications. We can say that some of the best representatives of each market segment are being compared.

The top number on the left is the linear read speed, when data is read sequentially. In this mode, almost all types of media show their maximum capabilities. The hard drive does not have to constantly move its heads, and most of the time is spent reading and transferring data. The solid-state drive, in turn, transmits data in large blocks, using all channels. This behavior of devices is usually observed when copying huge files - movies, archives, DVD images. The difference in speed between the two devices is 3.27 times.

The second row of numbers is read in 512k blocks. The hard drive begins to spend more time moving the heads in search of each block, so the speed decreases. SSDs have to do more calculations to access different flash memory cells. Please note that the performance of an SSD is 92% of the maximum, while a regular HDD is only 37%. This behavior corresponds to copying a set of small photographs and illustrations or audio files.

The next row is reading in very small blocks of 4 KB. It is in this test that speeds drop the most. A classic hard drive spends the lion's share of time moving the heads in search of the necessary pieces of information, and the solid-state drive performs a huge number of calculations to find the necessary cells. As a result, the speed of the hard drive dropped by 220 times, and the speed of the SSD dropped by only 15 times. The speed difference between the two tested devices on 4K units is 52 times. This mode of operation corresponds to the process of loading the operating system, launching applications and copying text documents– that is, the most frequent operations on a PC.

Now it's time to talk about parallel execution of operations. While working on a computer, the system runs many processes - programs and applications, system utilities, services that can access the drive at any time. It turns out that several read requests can arrive at one point in time. The hard drive is forced to process them one at a time - the heads can only read one file at a time. But an SSD has several memory chips in which information is stored. Therefore, you can process several requests at once, and they will all be executed in parallel.

The last line just shows the speed of work on 4K blocks with a request queue of 32. That is, the situation is simulated when you need to read 32 files of this size at once. As you can see, the hard drive has almost no differences in parallelization, since it can only receive one file at a time, while the SSD reads data in several threads, which allows for a 5.25-fold increase in performance. The slight difference in speed between a hard drive with and without a queue is explained by the presence of NCQ technology, which somehow organizes this very queue so as not to “run back and forth twice.”

For the sake of objectivity, it should be noted that such a deep queue almost never occurs in real conditions. For example, when the operating system boots, the queue value is approximately four.

In other words, if in theory (according to the documentation) the devices differ by a factor of 3.5, then in real operations during computer operation the difference can reach significantly greater values.

The right column in the program window is the results of the recording, for which all of the above is true.

Comparison of speed distribution of SSD (bottom) and HDD (top)

But that's not all. Take a look at the other graphs made by HD Tune. They show the distribution of speeds throughout the storage space (blue line). The left part corresponds to the beginning of the disk, the right – to the end. If an SSD produces the same speed over almost the entire volume, then the reading (and writing) of a hard drive seriously sags towards the middle of the space, and at the end it drops by more than 2 times. In practice, this means that if the operating system was installed on a full disk, or the last partition on the device, then the performance of the drive will be noticeably lower than stated. The same applies to access time (yellow dots), which increases as you move towards the end of the disk space.

It turns out, the initial superiority of 3.5 times in practice can result in 100 or 200 times. And this is compared to the best hard drives. There is nothing to say about ordinary discs with average characteristics. Therefore, buy an SSD as soon as possible.

Good afternoon.

The speed of the disk determines the speed of the entire computer as a whole! Moreover, surprisingly, many users underestimate this point... But the loading speed of the Windows OS, the speed of copying files to/from a disk, the speed of launching (loading) programs, etc. - it all depends on the speed of the disk.

Nowadays there are two types of disks in PCs (laptops): HDD ( hard disk drive - familiar hard drives) and SSD (solid-state drive - newfangled solid state drive). Sometimes their speed differs significantly (for example, Windows 8 on my computer with an SSD starts in 7-8 seconds, versus 40 seconds with an HDD - the difference is colossal!).

And now about what utilities and how you can check the speed of the disk.

One of best utilities for checking and testing disk speed (the utility supports both HDD and SSD drives). Works in all popular Windows OS: XP, 7, 8, 10 (32/64 bits). It supports the Russian language (although the utility is quite simple and easy to understand even without knowledge of English).

Rice. 1. CrystalDiskMark main window

To test your disk in CrystalDiskMark you need to:

select the number of write and read cycles (in Fig. 2 this number is 5, the optimal option);
1 GiB - file size for testing (optimal option);
“C:\” - drive letter for testing;
To start the test, simply click the “All” button. By the way, in most cases they always focus on the line “SeqQ32T1” - i.e. sequential writing/reading - therefore, you can simply select a test specifically for this option (you need to press the button of the same name).

The first speed (Read column, from English “read”) is the speed of reading information from the disk, the second column is writing to the disk. By the way, in Fig. 2 we tested an SSD drive (Silicon Power Slim S70): the read speed is 242.5 Mb/s - not the best indicator. For modern SSDs, the optimal speed is considered to be at least ~400 Mb/s, provided the connection is via SATA3* (although 250 Mb/s is more than the speed of a regular HDD and the increase in speed is visible to the naked eye).

* How to determine the operating mode of a SATA hard drive?

From the link above, in addition to CrystalDiskMark, you can also download another utility - CrystalDiskInfo. This utility will show you SMART disk, its temperature and other parameters (in general, an excellent utility for obtaining information about the device).

After starting it, pay attention to the line “Transfer mode” (see Fig. 3). If this line displays SATA/600 (up to 600 MB/s), then the drive is operating in SATA 3 mode (if the line displays SATA/300, i.e., the maximum throughput of 300 MB/s is SATA 2) .

AS SSD Benchmark

Author's website: http://www.alex-is.de/ (download link at the very bottom of the page)

Another very interesting utility. Allows you to easily and quickly test the hard drive of your computer (laptop): quickly find out the read and write speed. No installation required, use as standard (as with the previous utility).

On hard drives computers and laptops store files, operating system, everything that is in the device’s memory. The speed and stability of a PC largely depends on how quickly data is exchanged on different segments of the hard drive. For modern users HDD and SSD drives are offered, each option can be tested for speed and stability.

What should be the operating speed?

Single reference speed work hard there are no disks. However, there are recommended speeds for different types equipment.

HDDs

The data exchange speed depends on the type of connection of the drive to the motherboard:

SATA1 – 150 MB/s;
SATA2 – 300 MB/s;
SATA3 – 600 MB/s.

On most modern computers SATA2 types are installed. The maximum operating speed for them is 750 MB/s. Despite the listed capacities, the average data transfer speed is on average 85 MB/s.

SSD drives

SSD drives work much better faster HDD. Power users and gamers prefer to install this type of hard drive. SSDs are more expensive and offer less storage space, but they don't have mechanical parts that wear out and slow down your hardware.

On average, the speed of SSD drives exceeds HDDs by 55-80 times. Minimum speed 780 Mb/s.

Checking with the standard WinSat utility

To work with the built-in utility, you need to enter the command line:

Click Start or Windows button, go to Programs – Accessories – Command Line;
Click Start, enter cmd in the search bar, enter key;
Press the Win+R key combination, enter cmd, click on the “Run” button.

When the black command line window opens, you need to enter simple entry“winsat disk”, press Enter. The system will take some time to complete the check.

When in command line The cursor for entering records will appear again, you can evaluate the result. Close attention should be paid to the following entries:

Disk Sequential 64.0 Read – speed at which the memory reads sequential blocks;
Disk Random 16.0 Read – the speed at which the memory reads random blocks;
Disk Sequential 64.0 Write – the speed at which the hard drive writes data in sequential blocks.

The far right column provides a performance rating for each type of operation. The younger Windows version, those better grades should be expected.

Checking with third party programs

Third Party software developed for system administrators and ordinary users who undertake to check and repair their devices.

CrystalDiskMark

The utility is lightweight and distributed free of charge. You can download it from the official website of the developer.

Once launched, CrystalDiskMark performs a comparative analysis of the hard drive's speed when performing various operations. A small window displays information about the capacity of the equipment when reading and writing data.

CrystalDiskInfo

It is also a free program that can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The utility must be installed on your PC and launched. The working window displays information not only about the speed of work, but also the current state of rigid disk.

CrystalDiskInfo is designed for timely verification, evaluation and diagnosis of your hard drive. With the utility it is possible to prevent breakdowns and see what the current state of the equipment is.

HD Tune

Another utility that is distributed free of charge. HD Tune can be downloaded from foreign developers.

The program is suitable for more advanced users, because... It may be difficult to decipher the result.

AS SSD Benchmark

The utility was created by a single programmer, it is free and appearance similar to CrystalDiskMark. The main difference is the advanced interface.