In this article, we will see how to test Hard Drive speed on a Windows 11/10 computer. Hard Drive is among the crucial components of a computer. It is a storage device, also called a non-volatile memory, that stores your files and software. Our operating system is also installed on the hard drive.
You might have noticed that some computers run slow while performing multiple tasks whereas the speed of some computers remains unaffected during multitasking. It depends on the RAM and hard drive speed. Computers with slow hard drives usually freeze or hang while performing multiple tasks. This is the reason why SSDs are in high demand today.
How do I test my Hard Drive speed?
Apart from RAM, a computer’s performance also depends on the speed of the hard drive installed on it. You can test the speed of your hard drive by installing hard drive speed testing software. If you search on the internet, you will find some dedicated HDD speed testing software that allows you to test only your HDD speed, whereas some software also lets you test the performance of other hardware components like CPU, RAM, graphics card, etc.
We have listed some best free HDD speed testing software in this article. You can install them to test Hard Drive speed on your Windows 11/10 computer.
How to test Hard Drive speed on Windows 11/10 computer
You can test Hard Drive speed on your Windows 11/10 computer by installing free HDD Read/Write speed testing software. We have the following HDD speed testing software on this list:
- Novabench
- ATTO Disk Benchmark
- DiskMark
- HD Tune
- DiskCheck
- SysGauge
- CPUID HWMonitor
Let’s see the features of each of these free Hard Drive speed testing software.
List of Hard Drive or Disk Speed Test Tools
1] Novabench
Novabench lets you test the speed of your Hard Drive. Both free and paid versions of Novabench are available on its official website. Using the free version of Novabench, you can run benchmark tests and view detailed results online. It performs four different tests:
- CPU test
- RAM test
- GPU test
- Disk test
When you launch Novabench, you will see the Home screen that has a Start Tests button. If you click on that button, Novabench will run all the above-mentioned tests one by one. The process will take some time. Wait till Novabench completes testing. After the completion of the tests, it displays the result that contains the score of all the tested components (CPU, RAM, GPU, and Disk). You can view performance charts and comparisons on its official website by clicking on the View Performance Charts and Comparison button. To view detailed statistics, you have to create a free account on its official website.
You can also run individual tests in Novabench. To do so, go to “Tests > Individual Tests” and then select the test that you want to run. You can export the report in its own supported format (.nbr). Other formats (CSV and Excel) are only available in the paid version of Novabench.
2] ATTO Disk Benchmark
ATTO Disk Benchmark is one more free software that lets you test the speed of different partitions of a hard drive on Windows 11/10. Using this software is easy. Simply select your external hard drive or the partition of your internal hard drive from the drop-down menu and then click on the Start button. It performs the hard drive speed test on the basis of two factors, namely, the I/O size and the File size.
Before starting the speed test, you can select the I/O size and File size by clicking on the drop-down menu. The higher the value you select in I/O and File size, the more is the time taken by ATTO Disk Benchmark to determine the HDD speed. If you want, you can also bypass the Write cache for a particular HDD speed test.
After completing the test, it shows you the Read and Write speed of your hard drive along with the graphical representation for different I/O and File sizes. You can save the result in its own supported format or export the same in a JPEG image format.
You can download ATTO Disk Benchmark from softpedia.com.
3] DiskMark
DiskMark is a simple and straightforward software to test Hard Drive speed on Windows 11/10. It lets you perform a speed test on different partitions of a hard drive. To start the test, first, click on the Run button and then select the hard drive from the drop-down menu. When you are done, click Start.
After performing the test, it displays both read and write speeds along with the graphical representation of the selected hard drive. It also shows you the minimum, average, and maximum speeds of the hard drive. One thing that I did not like in this software is the missing export and save report options.
You can download DiskMark from its official website, networkdls.com.
TIP: CrystalDiskMark, CrystalDiskInfo, and Nero DiscSpeed. will help you benchmark & Monitor Hard Disk & USB Drives.
4] HD Tune
HD Tune is another free software that lets you test your hard drive speed. HD Tune is free for personal use. The free version of HD Tune has limited features as compared to the paid version. You will get the following features in the free version of HD Tune:
- Hard drive read speed
- Detailed drive information
- Drive health check
- Drive error scan
You cannot view the drive health check and error scan log files in the free version.
After launching the software, first, you have to select your hard drive from the drop-down menu and then click on the Start button to run the hard drive speed test. The process will take some time. After the completion of the test, you will see the minimum, maximum, and average speed of your hard drive in MB/sec. Apart from that, additional data, like access time, CPU usage, and burst rate is also displayed on the screen. You can save the HDD speed test report as an image in PNG format.
Read: Best free Overclocking software for Windows PC.
5] DiskCheck
DiskCheck is a portable hard drive speed testing software that calculates the read speed of a hard drive. When you launch it, it starts scanning your system for all the hard drives connected to it. After that, it displays all the available hard drives. To begin the test, you have to select the hard drive from the list and then click on the SpeedTest button.
DiskCheck will take some time to test the read speed of your hard drive. After completing the hard drive speed test, it displays the result that contains the drive read speed at the time the testing was started, the testing was completed, and the speed using the cache.
To use DiskCheck, you have to download it from its official website, miray-software.com.
Read: How to run Computer Performance Benchmark Test on Windows.
6] SysGauge
SysGauge is free for personal use. It is a complete computer performance monitoring software that also displays the HDD data transfer speed. All the hardware monitoring tools are accessible from the left pane of the software. After selecting a particular hardware monitoring tool, you can view the real-time statistics of the respective hardware.
The System Status displays the statistics of all the hardware components including CPU usage, disk transfer rate, available and used memory, used cache rate, etc. If you want to view the detailed statistics of particular hardware, you have to select the respective category.
By selecting the Disk Monitor category, you can view the detailed stats of your hard drive which include:
- Graphical representation of the disk activity.
- Disk read and write transfer speed in MB/sec.
- Disk read and write IOPS.
- Data transfer speed of all your hard disk partitions.
You can save the report in multiple formats, including HTML, PDF, Excel, XML, etc. To download SysGauge, visit its official website, sysgauge.com.
Read: PC Stress Test free software for Windows.
7] CPUID HWMonitor
CPUID HWMonitor is a free tool that shows the live statistics of your computer’s CPU, HDD, graphics card, etc. If we talk about the hard drive speed, HWMonitor displays both read and write data transfer speeds. In addition to this, it also shows the hard drive live temperature and utilization of all partitions.
It also has an option to save the report in text format. CPUID HWMonitor is available on its official website for download.
Read: Free software to Monitor & Check Hard Disk Heath for potential failure.
How can I test my SSD performance?
To test SSD performance, you can download free SSD benchmark software. Some of these free software also let you perform different tests on your SSD, like Seq test, 4K test, access time test, etc. This post will show you how to fix Slow SSD Read or Write Speed on Windows.
That’s it.
Read next: Best free tools to benchmark CPU and GPU on Windows computer.
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