Hard Drive Test

[TakeiT]

Does anyone know of a good free piece of software to test how well my hard drive is functioning?  I've got a feeling that it is dying (It's incredibly slow, and i've just formatted it).  I'd like to be able to test if my suspicions are true.  Maybe a program that shows a meter of how well its performing?

[ZetZet]

Crystaldiskinfo. Crystaldiskmark.

[SpagettiNinja]

Crystal Disk Info can show you info about its health. They also have a other program,Crystal Disk Mark, to test speeds.

[TakeiT]

I ran a test with crystaldiskinfo, it said the health is good but i've got 5580 hours on the drive.  It's a seagate laptop drive.  Anyone know the average lifespan of one of these?

[EarthboundHero]

I think Speefan gives SMART data. So do a lot of other programs.

[TakeiT]

At nearly 5600 hours, I'd like to know what the chances of the drive failing are.  I'm thinking of popping an SSD into it, but its only a computer i use sometimes, and it needs other things too.  Should I make that a priority?

[Captain_WD]

Does anyone know of a good free piece of software to test how well my hard drive is functioning?  I've got a feeling that it is dying (It's incredibly slow, and i've just formatted it).  I'd like to be able to test if my suspicions are true.  Maybe a program that shows a meter of how well its performing?

 

 

Hey TakeiT,

 

What HDD do you own? Usually each manufacturer has their own tool to do that and I always recommend it since they are tuned specifically for the manufacturer's own drives and best know the firmware. For example, Western Digital has WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool to do the checking of all WD drives. These tools are usually free.

 

Captain_WD. 

[asusfan]

I ran a test with crystaldiskinfo, it said the health is good but i've got 5580 hours on the drive.  It's a seagate laptop drive.  Anyone know the average lifespan of one of these?

if its a laptop drive it could be 2.5" drive running at 4500rpm? and maybe even Sata 2 ( 3gigs/sec)

so even if you have done a fresh install it will still be slow compared to a sata 3 drive.

[ManWithBeard1990]

if its a laptop drive it could be 2.5" drive running at 4500rpm? and maybe even Sata 2 ( 3gigs/sec)

so even if you have done a fresh install it will still be slow compared to a sata 3 drive.

Are you sure SATA II and III matters on HDD's? I think only SSD's will experience bottlenecks using the former (also the latter if you think about it but let's gloss over that)

[Dimwitted]

@TakeiT Why is 5600 hours a concern? That's barely broken in. I have almost 5K on my drives and the system is only 6 mths old. 556k hours would be a cause for concern perhaps.

[Captain_WD]

Are you sure SATA II and III matters on HDD's? I think only SSD's will experience bottlenecks using the former (also the latter if you think about it but let's gloss over that)

Usually a HDD's performance wouldn't change much if you go from SATA2 to SATA3 as HDDs hardly utilize SATA2 port's limits. There are differences, though, between the performance of a drive that is hooked on a SATA2 port and the same drive that is hooked on a SATA3 port:

-The burst speed is greater in SATA III configuration.

-The read speeds for file benchmarks are generally greater in SATA III configuration.

 

It basically means that you could see a bit of an improvement in SATA3 when transferring small files (smaller than your drive's cache size). Once the files become larger, there would hardly be any differences between the usage of the two ports (it would be around 1% difference in speed).

 

Captain_WD.

[-rascal-]

At nearly 5600 hours, I'd like to know what the chances of the drive failing are.  I'm thinking of popping an SSD into it, but its only a computer i use sometimes, and it needs other things too.  Should I make that a priority?

 

Not even close.

Most drives have a MTBF of 300,000 hours (or more). You are only at ~5,600 hours.

[TakeiT]

Thanks, guys.