How Do You Test the Speed of Your Hard Disk?

How do you test the speed of your hard disk in Windows?

Although many users start to use SSD to replace HDD as the system disk, a hard drive is still one of the important storage components of the computer. The cheaper price but larger capacity make it now, more like a data disk to carry working or learning programs and games.

If you're using a hard drive in your Windows PC, then the read and write speed of your hard drive will affect your device performance. Thus, it’s needed to regularly test disk speed to monitor your disks.

2 ways to test disk speed

Many users might not know how to test drive speed. Usually, we’ll need speed test tool to do his task. So, in this part, we’ll show you two tools. One is a Windows built-in tool, the other is a free third-party tool.

Way 1. Test disk speed via Task Manager

Task Manager offers a simplified disk speed test tool for Windows users.

Step 1. Enter “Task Manager” in the search bar and open it.

Step 2. Once open, browse to the “Performance” option.

Step 3. Select the target disk to test from the list on the left. Then you can see some basic data about that disk, including read and write speed.

Way 2. Test speed via drive speed test tool

As you can see, Task Manager provides very limited information regarding the speed of your hard disk. If you wish to learn more about the target disk, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a dependable and easy-to-use hard drive speed tester.

This is a professional disk and partition manager for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP PC. The “Disk Speed Test” function can help all kinds of users to test their disks because this tool has 2 test modes.

• Simple Mode
If you only need to do a regular test, Simple Mode can help you. Users only need to choose the target drive, then the tool will test all information. After the test, you can export the result into 3 forms (clipboard, text, and screenshot).

• Pro Mode
However, if you need detailed results, you can go to Pro Mode. It allows you to set all details like maximum/average speed, file size, test number, duration, block size, queue number, and thread number, etc.

Now, let’s try this tool to do a test.

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Select the SSD partition and choose “Disk Speed Test” under "Test" menu.

Step 2. The default mode is Simple Mode, click “Start” to run a simple speed test. Or click "Pro Mode" to get a more comprehensive test we introduced above.

Step 3. After the test, you can click “Export” to see the test result.

The operations are quite easy, you can also test your external hard drive speed.

After the test, you can adjust your disk according to the result.

Bonus tips: How to speed up your disk

What is the result of your disk speed test? If it doesn’t reach your expectation, don’t be upset, here, we have some tips for you. You can try some of them to speed up your hard drive.

1. For HDD

▶ Tip 1. Disk defrag

File fragmentation might be the most annoying factor that drags your hard drive speed down. They are split data files separate around on your HDD. Since their location is too decentralized, your HDD will need more time to find them when you try to boot some programs.

Defragment is to reorganize those split files and rearrange them orderly, then your HDD can find all the needed files quickly.

To defrag your HDD, AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you. Right-click the HDD and choose “Disk Defrag”.

▶ Tip 2. Extend C drive

This advice is for users who use an HDD as a system disk. Your OS needs more available space to store OS data and store them to ensure your PC runs smoothly. If there’s unallocated space on your disk, you can merge it into your C drive. But if your disk doesn’t have it, you can directly allocate free space from another drive to your C drive. All data is safe.

2. For SSD

Unlike HDD, SSD can’t be speeded up by defragment. What’s worse, if you defrag your SSD, it will shorten its lifespan.

▶ Tip 1. Open Trim feature

The Trim feature is a built-in feature for SSD to manage garbage files.

Step 1. Press “Windows” + “R” and type CMD to open it.

Step 2. Type: “fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify” to check if the Trim feature is on or off.

DisableDeleteNotify = 0 : TRIM is already available and working on Windows

DisableDeleteNotify = 1 : TRIM is not available

Step 3. If it’s not available, please type: "fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify" and press “Enter” to enable Trim.

▶ Tip 2. Align partitions

Aligning your partitions on the SSD can also improve the performance of the SSD.

To sum up

After reading this post, how do you test the speed of your hard disk? If you test the speed of your disk and you want to speed it up, you can try the tips we list for you.

AOMEI Partition Assistant is a multifunctional tool for Windows computers. Besides the features we’ve mentioned in this post, it can also convert partition type between MBR and GPT without data loss, move apps and folders, clone disks, and so on. What’s more, if you want to manage your Server device more efficiently, you can choose the Server Edition of this practical tool.