How to Monitor and Check Performance of a Hard Disk
Very often you might come across a scenario where the hard disk of your PC produces screeching noise. You may be wondering why and what is this noise from your PC? The likely cause of this issue is a probable problem with the hard disk drive in your machine. Urgently backup your hard disc as it may fail permanently and not be accessible. It’s important that you backup your hard disk drive periodically.
The performance of your hard disk drive is often influenced by a couple of characteristics:
- Electrical/Mechanical restrictions
- Intensity of the Input and Output load induced
Factors That Influence the Performance of the Electro-Mechanical Hard Disk Drive
Since the electronic components operate at a quicker rate when compared to the mechanical components constituting a hard disk, the operational efficiency of the HDD often depends on the latter. The characteristics that greatly influence the performance of your hard disk can be summarized as follows:
- Time Taken To Process Commands
- Rate of Data Access for the Heads
- Movement of the access arm
- Latency of the Rotating Platter
- Write versus Read Operations
- Number of Read and Write Operations
- Adjacent and Full Stroke Movement Specifications of Access Arm
1. Time Taken To Process Commands
Hard Disk of your PC has built in mechanism that enables the drive to interact with the external environment. The embedded mechanism also takes charge of error recovery problems also. They also take the responsibility of processing the reading and writing of data happening from and to the drive.
2. Rate of Data Access for the Heads
The rate at which the data is read or written to/by the heads greatly depends on the working of the heads when the disk platter over which they are positioned keeps spinning. In order to read the data in the right sector, the heads have to reach the right position while the platter disk keeps rotating and this process would take some time. The time elapsed in this process is termed as the total access time for your hard drive.
3. Movement of the access arm
The movement of the access arm is a critical factor that determines the performance of the hard drive. The access arm is required to adjust itself to frequent changes in speed levels. It should attain the required speed instantly and slow down as and when required with ease. Usually this is approximately 5.5 milliseconds.
4. Latency of the Rotating Platter
When a read/write access is to be performed on the hard drive, the spinning platter has to reach the required position as soon as possible. On a 10000RPM drive, this speed is equivalent to .05 milliseconds.
5. Write versus Read Operations
If your hard disk makes use of magnetic storage media for storing data, then it is likely that the drive takes the same time irrespective of whether it is a read or a write operation. But in case of mass storage mechanism, the drive would take more time for a write operation when compared to a read operation.
6. Number of Read and Write Operations
The number of read and write requests that are send to the hard drive often becomes a very important factor when it comes to the performance of the drive.
7. Adjacent and Full Stroke Movement Specifications of Access Arm
Access arm may access the nearest data in a very few milliseconds while it can take a few more milliseconds to access the data that is located far from its current position. So the full cylinder stroke and adjacent cylinder stroke time of the access arm are important when considering the performance of the hard disk.
Hard Disk Performance Checking Tools
Here is a popular list of the hard disk performance checking tools. You can make use of any one of these and test the performance of your hard disk with ease.
Performance Test Utility
Overview:
Performance Test is a great PC performance checker that tests the speed and generates reports based on the actual obtained. They have a trial 30 day evolution version. The price is $24. The different features of this utility are:
- It helps in testing the performance of your hard drive
- Used to make comparison between different PCs
- This utility helps in tracking the changes that are incorporated due to changes in PC settings and upgrades.
- This software offers customizable set of advanced tests where you can create your unique bench marks.
- Standard tests include graphics test, CPU performance test, disk tests, memory test and CD/DVD tests.
Operating Systems Supported:
- Windows 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista
DiskTT
Overview:
DiskTT is another very simple but absolutely free and popular hard disk performance checking tool that you can make use of with ease. The tool calculates number of megabytes of data that is read and written to the hard disk in a second. The tool also reports the time taken by the hard drive for random access. It makes the measurements under 32-bit Windows currently.
Pre Requisites:
- DiskTT tool utilizes the core write/read functions and works only with Windows operating system.
- You have to set the test file size prior to running the hard disk performance test with this tool
Operating Systems Supported:
- Windows 9X, XP, NT, ME, 2000
HD Tune Pro
Overview:
Yet another utility that can be used to check the performance of your hard disk is the HD Tune Pro. This is the advanced version of HD Tune. The SATA, SCSI and IDE hard drives can be checked for their performance with ease suing HD Tune Pro. The price is $34.95, you can try it for 15 days.
The critical functionalities of this tool include
- Performance and temperature measurement
- Performance report generation
- Health status analysis
- Error Scanning
Pre Requisites:
- The tool should be run in administrator mode
- 10MB disk space is required to run this tool
Operating Systems Supported:
- Windows 2000, 2003 Server, XP, XP 64-bit
SpeedFan Utility
Overview:
SpeedFan is a very useful software utility that is used to check the performance of your hard disk by accessing S.M.A.R.T info and supervise fan speeds, voltages and temperature in your PC.
The best thing about this tool is the fact that this would be able to change a CPU clock speed and speed of fans according to the temperature reported. The software can work with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows OS.
SpeedFan checks the temperatures using the available IC chips that make their temperature sensors prominent inside your CPU box. Speed Fan software would be able to check the temperature of your hard disk and access S.M.A.R.T info if it is supported in your PC and where you can check the current state and get all information about your hard disc based on reported S.M.A.R.T info.
By using S.M.A.R.T option in SpeedFan you can access the Internet and find out even more data about your hard disk state.
Operating Systems Supported:
- Windows 9x, ME, 2000, 2003, XP, NT
These tools are definitely will assist you in determine the state of your hard drive