Hard drive benchmarking software?

[RESPAWN]

I was wondering if anybody here had any hard disk benchmarking software that they would recommend? I'd like to compare the read/write rates of my old 250 GB 7200 RPM, Sata 3.0 Gb/sec system drive to my new 2 TB "Coolspin", Sata 6.0 Gb/sec RAID 1 array.

I'm really curious how the faster data rate, but slower rpm drives in the RAID array compare to the slower data rate, but faster rpm drive. My gut tells me that the RAID array should be slower to write, and therefore slower for Windows caching purposes, but I wonder how much difference that faster transfer speed will make.

 

[reflex99]

CrystalDiskmark

HDTune

PCMark Vantage

 

[RESPAWN]

Thanks for the links. I've run CrystalDiskMark this morning and the results are somewhat surprising to me. I'll post more screenshots and my own analysis later this evening when I get home.

 

[Jubei]

The areal density will also help the newer drive(s). The closer the bits are physically on the platter, the quicker they zip under the read/write head.

A good RAID controller should yield no performance drops on writes in RAID 1 (comparing same drives) and better reads (should read from each drive like in RAID 0) - of course that depends on if you have a good controller or not.

My guess is only is only a 20-30% boost in read performance and a good solid 175-200% in reads.

I have a 3 drive RAID 0 and it cooks dinner and serves it on fine china - love it.

 

[RESPAWN]

The areal density will also help the newer drive(s). The closer the bits are physically on the platter, the quicker they zip under the read/write head.

A good RAID controller should yield no performance drops on writes in RAID 1 (comparing same drives) and better reads (should read from each drive like in RAID 0) - of course that depends on if you have a good controller or not.

My guess is only is only a 20-30% boost in read performance and a good solid 175-200% in reads.

I have a 3 drive RAID 0 and it cooks dinner and serves it on fine china - love it.

Indeed. You've got to think that, in computer terms, I'm ancient. LOL. Older RAID controllers would have a bit of a write delay with RAID 1, especially with cheaper controllers, as the controller had to write everything twice. It's been 7 years since the last time I compared speed, as that's how log I've had the PCI RAID controller that I just dumped in favor of using the onboard RAID.

I did get a screenshot and I uploaded it to my web server at the office, but I still haven't gotten around to setting my site back up since that server crashed on Monday, so no screenshot to post. (Yeah, yeah. Photobucket, etc. I'm lazy, and like to host my images on my own domain. )

In any case, I ran the CrystalDiskMark tests on my current system drive, a blank partition on my RAID array (which should affect performance a bit since there's no fragmentation), and my USB 3.0 external HD.

The short of it is that both my RAID array and my USB 3.0 HD out-performed my current system drive in almost all categories. The raid array did have slower write speeds in one test, and there was a bigger gap between the read and write speeds in another test, but all in all, it looks like it's a faster choice than my current system drive. Guess it's time to migrate my system drive to that array.