How do I test my hard drive speed? What is a good hard drive speed? How do I check my SSD speed Windows 10? This post provides an easy, fast and free way to help you measure hard drive and SSD performance in Windows 10/8/7. Some top free disk benchmark software and solutions to increase hard drive speed in Windows 10/8/7 are also attached.
To boost the overall performance of a computer, aside from a good CPU and memory chip, hard drive also plays an important role.
If your computer hard drive is becoming slow, you may want to test its read and write speed to see if you need to change for a new one. Moreover, when you buy a new hard drive, you can also utilize top free hard drive/SSD speed test software to measure its performance to see if it’s just as the vendor said.
This post will start with a detailed guide on how to easily test hard drive, SSD, external hard drive read/write speed with the best free HDD/SSD speed test program – MiniTool Partition Wizard. You can check the 4 simple steps below.
How to Do Hard Drive/SSD Speed Test with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free
MiniTool Partition Wizard is a 100% clean and free hard drive speed test tool which is compatible with Windows 10/8/7. You can use it to test read and write performance of almost all storage devices, including computer internal hard drives, external hard disk drives like Seagate hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, and more.
This full-featured software has free version, pro version, and several higher versions. To perform the disk benchmark, you can only use its free version.
Click the button below to download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard free version on your Windows 10/8/7 PC. And follow the simple operations to test the speed of hard drive or SSD.
1. Run HDD/SDD Speed Test Software
Open the hard disk/SSD test software for Windows 10/8/7 - MiniTool Partition Wizard. Click Disk Benchmark button on the tool bar of the main interface.
2. Set HD/SSD Disk Test Parameters
Next you can select a partition on the hard drive like drive D to test its read and write speed, and then freely set the test parameters in the Disk Benchmark window.
Namely, you can set the data transfer sizes from 1KB to 2048KB at one time; the total amount of transferred data from 100MB to 4096MB; set Queue Number to queue up several read and write tasks on the drive; set Thread Number to use how many threads to benchmark the speed of the hard drive.
And choose a disk Test Mode like Sequential, Random, and Sequential & Random.
3. Start to Test Hard Drive Speed
Click Start to begin testing the hard drive or SSD read and write speed with the hard disk/SSD speed test tool for Windows 10/8/7. Different test settings may take different time. After it finishes the speed testing of the hard disk or SSD, it will show you an intuitive graphical table.
4. Check and Analyze the Speed Test Result
You can check the hard drive test result now, and compare it with standard read/write speed of hard drive to see if they differ too much.
Normally a modern 7200 RPM HDD connected with SATA delivers about 80-160 MB/s, while an SSD can read and write sequential data at about 500MB/s.
Knowledge base:
Seq refers to sequential read and write speeds, while 4K means random read and write speeds.
Sequential reading and writing: it is mainly for measuring the speed of hard drive when transferring large files like copying movie videos. A high sequential read speed can also lower the loading time of larger files or programs like games. It is more important for mass storage drives like external disk drives.
4K random reading and Writing: this matters more in testing hard drive speed in reading and writing random small files. It is more important for computer system drive since high 4K random read/write speed can deal with multiple tasks efficiently like smoothly running more background programs on computer, playing large size games.
How to Increase Hard Drive Speed in Windows (10)?
If you find your (external) drives run very slow after the hard drive benchmarking, you may try these ways to improve the speed of your hard drive. MiniTool Partition Wizard has many other features and capabilities.
1. Scan bad sectors
If there are bad sectors on hard disk, then it will slow down the speed of hard drive. You can easily check whether your hard drive has bad sectors for free with MiniTool Partition Wizard disk surface test feature.
Step 1. Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard and right-click the target disk. Choose Surface Test option.
Step 2. In the Surface Test window, you can just click Start Now and this program will scan the hard drive immediately.
Step 3. After the disk testing, it will tell you if your hard drive has some bad sectors. If so, it will be marked red, if not, it will be marked green.
If your hard drive has some bad sectors, you can use some professional software to bypass bad sectors, or send it to professional disk repair stores. If nothing helps, you can change a new drive.
Recommended reading: How to recover lost data from a broken hard drive
2. Delete unnecessary files
The hard drive is very slow after testing the speed of the hard drive or SSD in Windows (10).
In case the hard drive is filled up, you may clean up some unnecessary files, especially those with large file sizes, to free up some storage space. Check how to easily check which files have large file sizes on your hard drive and choose to delete them with MiniTool Partition Wizard space analyzer feature below.
Step 1. Double-click MiniTool Partition Wizard software icon on screen to enter into its main interface. Click Space Analyzer function. Then choose a drive and click Scan.
Step 2. When the disk scanning is completed, MiniTool Partition Wizard provides you three ways to check the files: Tree View, File View, and Folder View.
Step 3. The folders are listed in descending order. Check which folders/files occupy large storage space. You can right-click specific folder/file to open, explore it, copy its path, delete it to recycle bin, delete permanently or check its property.
3. Perform a hard drive defragmentation
A fragmented hard drive may also be slow. Huge amount of fragmented files will slow down the hard drive read and transfer speed a lot. To defragment hard drive in Windows (10) can pull the scattered pieces of a file into single data block. Therefore, it can reduce the data access time on a hard drive.
Click Start -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> Defragment Your Hard Drive -> Click Analyze Disk (if the drive has more than 10% fragmentation, it needs to be defragmented) -> Click Defragment Disk button after the disk analysis -> Click Close button after the disk defragmentation is completed.
4. Extend C drive on computer
The speed of hard drive largely influences computer’s performance. You can also extend the operating system partition on the hard drive to boost the computer speed. MiniTool Partition Wizard also has a partition extend feature.
Does High RPM Hard Drive Mean Fast Hard Drive Speed?
When choosing a hard drive, RPM is an important factor. RPM is short for revolutions per minute. This parameter of hard drive indicates the rotational speeds of hard disk platters. When other parameters of hard disk are the same, the faster the RPM is, the faster the hard drive read/write speed will be. You can follow the guide above to test the speed of hard drive or SSD with different RPMs to verify.
Most desktop computer hard drives equip 7200 RPM. The fastest hard drive RPM can reach to 15000 RPM which can be found in enterprise drives.
2021 Top 10 Free HDD/SSD Speed Test Software for Windows 10/8/7
#1 MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro
It is the first recommended free hard disk benchmarking program. As for how to use it to test the speed of hard drive/SSD, the step-by-step guide is included at the beginning of this tutorial.
Aside from allowing you to test the performance of hard disk and SSD in Windows (10), you can also use it to manage hard drive partition/dynamic disk, clone disk, convert disk like FAT to NTFS, recover data/files/partitions from hard drive/SSD/SD card/USB, and more.
Get this all-in-one partition manager & data recovery software for Windows 10/8/7.
#2 CrystalDiskMark
This free and open-source hard disk benchmark software is commonly used for testing the speed of Solid State Drives. It outputs sequential and random reads/writes speeds based on various queue deeps and threads. This program is compatible with Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP.
#3 ATTO Disk Benchmark
The capabilities of this disk benchmark freeware utility include measure performance differences of hard drives, Solid State Drives, RAID, etc. It is compatible with Windows 10/8/7.
#4 AS SSD Benchmark
You can use this tool to test Solid State Drives speed. You can use it to carry out several specific tests to test sequential or random read and write speed of the SSD.
It is compatible with Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP.
#5 HD Tach
HD Tach is free disk benchmark software for Windows. You can use it to test the sequential read, random access speed of the connected storage devices. It supports CSI, IDE/ATA, IEEE 1394, USB, SATA and RAID drive technologies.
This software only supports Windows XP or 2000, and it is discontinued.
#6 HD Tune
A SSD/HDD benchmark tool lets you test hard drive’s speed, scan for errors, securely erase all data, etc. Its free trial version can perform low-level benchmark to test drive’s read speed. It is compatible with Windows XP-10.
#7 Anvil’s Storage Utilities
This tool is specially designed for testing reads and writes speed of SSD or HDD. It can give a comprehensive SSD benchmark result.
#8 Roadkil’s Disk Speed
It can test the speed of disks and display details. It supports up to Windows 8, and doesn’t support Windows 10.
#9 Parkdale
You can use this tool to test sequential and random read & write speed of hard disks. You can select several drives like drive D, drive I, and it can conduct a continuous testing, and the result will be written into a log file. Then you can check and compare which drive has the best disk performance.
#10 DiskMark
It enables you to perform the hard drive performance measurement by configuring test parameters.
2021 Top 3 Free Hard Drive/SSD Speed Test Tools for Mac
#1 NovaBench
Novabench is a free computer benchmarking utility for macOS. You can not only use it to measure disk read and write speed, but also test memory speed, do CPU tests, GPU speed, etc.
It is also compatible with Windows, Linux.
#2 Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
Stylish free app for macOS to test hard drive perfomance. You can use it to test how fast your Mac’s drive is and display the drive tests result. It is simple-to-use and fast.
#3 Geekbench
Geekbench is also a cross-platform benchmark tool that allows you to measure your computer and mobile conditions. Geekbench 4 supports macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android. You can go to Geekbench official website to download the latest version of Geekbench.
HDD vs SSD Speed
Normally SSD is faster than HDD. A standard SSD can read data at about 550 MBps and write data at about 520 MBps. A fast HDD may read and write sequential data at a maximum speed of 130 MBps.
Related: How to Get Best Performance from SSD
Final Thoughts
This post mainly introduces how to test hard drive/SSD speed with MiniTool Partition Wizard, how to increase the speed of hard drive, as well as lists some top free hard drive speed test software for Windows (10) and Mac. Hope you can easily measure your hard drive, SSD, external drives read/write speed with ease now.
MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate – User’s first choice to manage hard drive and various storage devices, and recover lost/deleted data from hard drives. Compatible with Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP. Windows Server editions are also provided.
Still have problems about how to test the speed of hard disk drives or solid state drives? Please contact [email protected].
Hard Drive Speed Test FAQ
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Alisa is a professional English editor with 4-year experience. She loves writing and focuses on sharing detailed solutions and thoughts for computer problems, data recovery & backup, digital gadgets, tech news, etc. Through her articles, users can always easily get related problems solved and find what they want. In spare time, she likes basketball, badminton, tennis, cycling, running, and singing. She is very funny and energetic in life, and always brings friends lots of laughs.
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