How to measure disk-performance under Windows?

Question

I'm trying to find out why my application is very slow on a certain machine (runs fine everywhere else). I think i have traced the performance-problems to hard-disk reads and writes and i think it's simply the very slow disk.

What tool could i use to measure hd read and write performance under Windows 2003 in a non-destructive way (the partitions on the drives have to remain intact)?

Solution 1

There is a built-in disk performance checker in Windows called winsat:

winsat disk -drive g

(Run winsat with Administrator privileges)

More info: Info on winsat disk on technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742157.aspx

e.g:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>winsat disk -drive g
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive g -ran -read'
> Run Time 00:00:04.17
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive g -seq -read'
> Run Time 00:00:08.64
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive g -seq -write'
> Run Time 00:00:17.47
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive g -flush -seq'
> Run Time 00:00:03.53
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive g -flush -ran'
> Run Time 00:00:04.16
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       21.05 MB/s          6.0
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   38.29 MB/s          4.9
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write                  39.67 MB/s          4.9
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes     1.324 ms          7.4
> Latency: 95th Percentile                     2.585 ms          7.3
> Latency: Maximum                             26.977 ms          7.9
> Average Read Time with Random Writes         1.299 ms          8.1
> Total Run Time 00:00:39.41

Solution 2

HD Tach has been end of lifed. HD Tune appears to be equivalent: http://www.hdtune.com/

Solution 3

For those who might be looking for something capable of testing SQL type scenarios there's Diskspd.exe which has superseded SQLIO.

Solution 4

You can use Perfmon to gather physical disk based counters, such as:

• Physical Disk (instance)\Disk Transfers/sec counter for each physical disk

• Physical Disk(instance)\% Idle Time

• Avg. Disk Queue Length

Or download PAL (very useful monitoring tool) and use the built-in template targeting the OS.

Solution 5

ATTO Disk Benchmark is freeware and does not require installation.

View more solutions

Comments

[Iain Holder]

Pretty graphs FTW! +1

[Ron]

Iometer sucks for the casual user. Requires an installer (wth for) tries to open friggen sockets and the UI is your typical OSS ui--ugly, way more complex than necessary, and ultimately confusing to anybody that doesn't RTFM.

[ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells]

Worked fine for me ;-}

[Hugo]

The link is dead and there's now a HD Tach End of Life Announcement at their website saying it's no longer supported.

[TopBanana]

@Hugo good spot, have updated my answer accordingly

[Jürgen Steinblock]

Finally a solution which is a) build in b) command line - Thanks a lot. To use it on a 2012 Server Core OS I had co copy the files winsat.exe, d3d11.dll, dxgi.dll, d3d10.dll, d3d10_1.dll, d3d10_1core.dll, d3d10core.dll from a windows 8 computer.

[David Krider]

You have to run the command prompt as an administrator, otherwise it pops a new command prompt and disappears as soon as it's finished, taking the results with it.

[Stalinko]

Unfortunately doesn't work on virtual servers :(

[ivan_pozdeev]

Note that winsat is new in Vista.

[ivan_pozdeev]

The latest version 1.1.0 doesn't run in XP, version 2006.07.27 does.

[ivan_pozdeev]

I must admit the UI is far from being user-friendly. It still gets the job done and, unlike most other benchmarking tools, measures latency.

[ivan_pozdeev]

It also saves results in CSV; if you select the same file again, it appends to it - quite nice for comparison, graphing etc.

[ivan_pozdeev]

Its force is distributed/remote benchmarking over an arbitrary setup (the utility was originally written by Intel engineers for internal use), though this is hardly ever needed in casual use.

[mtk]

What does the number in 3rd column in the last rows specify? The link also doesn't provide info in this respect. Any idea?

[David d C e Freitas]

@mtk It looks like the WinSAT score assigned to the result. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_System_Assessment_Tool

[Adrian Günter]

@Stalinko works fine in Windows 8.1 running on KVM here

[aaaidan]

Any info on how to benchmark these numbers? How can I know if my stats are slow or not?

[David d C e Freitas]

@aaaidan Well, the 3rd column is the WinSAT Score which is "the WEI scores on a scale from 1.0 to 5.9 for Windows Vista,[3] 7.9 for Windows 7,[4] and 9.9 for Windows 8 and Windows 10.[5]"

[Drew Noakes]

Unfortunately does not support software RAID.

[tymik]

@Stalinko I confirm running in VM, just tried in virtualbox

[Sarke]

Does anyone know of a Linux command that would yield equivalent results?

[Frankie]

As of 2022 requires both to fill a form and also installation... :|

[Community]

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