[New Guide] How to Run Disk Speed Test on Windows 10 PC
A disk is one of the most important components of a computer. It is a storage device, also known as a non-volatile memory that holds your information, the operating system, and applications.
You may have noticed that certain computers run slowly when completing many activities, whilst the speed of other systems stays unchanged. It is determined by the RAM and disk speed. When completing many activities, computers with sluggish hard drives frequently stop or hang. This is why SSDs are in such great demand nowadays.
This article will show you how to conduct a disk speed test on a Windows 10/11 PC.
2 tools for disk speed test on Windows 10
In this part, we’ll introduce 2 speed-test tools for you, one is from a professional disk management program, and the other is from Microsoft.
Tool 1. Disk Speed Test from Qiling Disk Master
The “Disk Speed Test” function of Qiling Disk Master Professional, a disk and partition manager for Windows OS supporting Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP is what we highly recommend for users to test disk speed easily with a clear interface and user-friendly operations.
It doesn’t require users to have professional computer knowledge to understand various data. There are 2 test modes: "Simple Mode" and “Pro Mode”. You can choose the better mode according to your needs.
All data will be noted in detail so that users can easily read the test result. And this tool allows you to export the test result in 3 ways: copy to clipboard, export to text, and export to screenshot. So you can conveniently use the result in many ways.
We’ll introduce 2 test modes separately.
1. Simple Mode
Step 1. Download and run Qiling Disk Master. Click “Test”--> “Disk Speed Test”.
Step 2. In the new window, you can select a test partition, and “Start Test” in "Simple Mode” which is the default mode. You can stop the test during the test.
After clicking the "Start Test" button, the software starts to test the speed of the hard disk, and the read and write speeds are displayed in real-time according to the system.
When the test is finished, you can see the read/write speed of the drive you selected.
Step 3. If you need, you can click “Export” to export the result. There are 3 ways: Copy to clipboard, Export to text, and Export to screenshot. You can select a location to save the test result.
2. Pro Mode
Step 1. After you click “Expert Mode”, you can see the window of this mode. Select the drive you need to test.
Step 2. Next to the drive selection is the speed, size, test number, and test duration. You can set all according to your needs.
Step 3. Then you can set the “Test Mode”, “ Block Size”, “Queue Number”, and “Thread Number”.
Step 4. When you start the test, the “Read” and “Write” will show the speed in MB/s.
When the test is over, you can export the result as the Pro Mode. After the test, the program will pop out some advice to help you manage your disk, you can run or refuse based on your requirements.
2. DiskSpd from Microsoft
Considering the demand for disk speed tests, Microsoft released a disk speed test tool called DiskSpd on 20th , Sep 2021. It is a free and open-source command-line storage benchmarking application for Microsoft Windows that produces a range of queries against computer files, partitions, or storage devices and displays gathered information as text in the command-line interface or as an XML file.
It’s a little complex but don't worry, we’ll guide you from the download way, how to run and how to read the result.
▶ Section 1. Download
1. Check the storage space's health.
2. Check resource usage to avoid other programs breaking the test.
Now let’s start!
Step 1. You can download the DiskSpd tool directly from the GitHub repository that contains the open-source code.
Step 2. Open the zip folder. Click the “Extract all” option from the "Compressed Folder Tools" tab. And confirm a path to extract the files.
When you complete the steps, you can start the tool from Command Prompt.
▶ Section 2. Use DiskSpd to do a hard drive speed test
Before beginning the performance test, it is advised that all current apps be closed and that the storage health is in excellent shape.
Now, open Command Prompt and start the test!
Step 1. Search Command Prompt, right-click the best match and select the “Run as administrator” option.
Step 2. Type the following command to navigate to the folder containing the DiskSpd tool and press “Enter”:
cd \PATH\TO\TOOL (eg. cd C:\Users\username\Downloads\DiskSpd\amd64)
Make sure to specify the command to the destination of the DiskSpd.exe file.
Step 3. Type the following command and press “Enter” to run the DiskSpd to test the read/write performance of the target disk on Windows 10:
diskspd -d60 -W15 -C15 -c128M -t4 -o4 -b8k -L -r -Sh -w50 c:\disk-speed-test.dat
You must type each parameter correctly for the command to run correctly.
This command will run the test without showing you the test result, if you need to see a result file, you need to use the following order:
diskspd -d60 -W15 -C15 -c128M -t4 -o4 -b8k -L -r -Sh -w50 c:\disk-speed-test.dat > c:\drive-test-results.txt
Update the location and filename for the target data file and the file to store the benchmark results in the command. The test results will be saved in a text file.
-d60 — How long the command will stress the hard drive in seconds.
-W15 — Set the warm-up time before the test begins.
-C15 — Set the cool-down time after the test.
-c128M — Customize the size of the file to create for testing.
-t4 —The number of threads to use. You can use one per available core in the processor.
-o4 — Assign the number of outstanding I/O requests per target per thread.
-b8k — Defines the size of the block (default is 64K).
-L — Measures latency statistics.
-r — Produces random I/O. You can override this with the "-s" option.
-Sh — Disables software and hardware write caching.
-w50 — Assign the percentage of write and read requests. Using 100 means that the command will write 100 percent of the time during the test and using 0 means that the command will only perform 100 percent reads. For example, "-W50" will perform 50 percent writing and 50 percent reading. This is a balanced test, but you can change the number to adjust the test to fit your situation.
c:\disk-speed-test.dat — This command is the path to store the target file for the test.
▶ Section 3. Read the Diskspd result
When the performance test is finished, the results will be shown on the screen. The first section gives a summary of the command settings you selected, such as duration, warm-up and cool-down intervals, latency data, and other details of the test.
The outcome has many tables. The first section of the result shows how long the command took to finish the test, as well as the number of threats and processors.
◤ Total IO: It displays the number of reads and writes performed by each thread. The statistics show the average performance in MB/s. The total number of reading/write operations completed in a second, as well as total input/output within that time period.
The total result from the MiB/s displays the average speed of reading/writing.
◤ Read IO & Write IO: They display read statistics per thread and the write statistic. In addition, the table at the bottom of the page contains latency information.
Final lines
In Windows, a disk speed test is a task that needs users to have some tech and computer knowledge, hard drive speed test software is necessary. Compared to the DiskSpd test, Qiling Disk Master might be easier to operate for users. And other features of this tool can help users directly manage their device after the test, like defrag disk and aligning partitions.
Besides these functions, this tool can also clone disk, migrate OS, and move programs… And there’s the Server Edition for you to conveniently manage your Server device.
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