How to Test Disk Drive Performance (benchmarks) in Ubuntu?

A while ago I was quite obsessed with testing hard disk performance. I purchased a HDD those days and it was a , let's called it "A" (I don't wanna create a prejudice since this manufacture has some great products) HDD. Interestingly, one of my friends had a Samsung HDD with the same hardware specifications (RPM, capacity ...) except, the Samsung HDD had like 256Kb or more physical Disk-cache in it.

Now to this day I don't know whether it was the small Cache difference caused it... but I did noticed a little boot time delay (with MS Windows actually). I tested those both HDD in my PC and Samsung always seems to be slightly faster.

Then, since MS Windows doesn't come with a hard drive performance test or a benchmark suite in other words, I used a free utility and it actually showed that the model "A" (they're both 80GB and IDE ones) was in fact a bit slower!.

Disk utility that comes with Ubuntu...

I went to the store and they replaced the HDD like 2-3 times but all those brand new "A" models were all a bit slower than the Samsung ones. Now as said I don't know whether the Cache on the drive that caused it... but it was clearly visible nonetheless.

So, all I'm just trying to say is that, if you brought a brand-new PC then testing your hard drive performance can come in handy because it lets you compare the drives actual performance with other ones (you can find results of other drives of manufactures online easily) thus you can even ask for a replacement.

Sorry to drag you along this long... but all I'm trying to say is that, having a benchmark suite can come quite handy sometimes sine it helps you to go beyond your doubts :). Anyhow, unlike with MS Windows, now if you use Ubuntu as your main OS, then did you know that even without installing any third party utility, Ubuntu has a built in tool that lets you test disk performance with ease?.

It's called Disk Utility and RedHat seems to be the developer so it might be a default app that comes with Gnome classic desktop.

Main features...

*. Test Hard disk performance.

Remember, you can only perform Write Speed tests with HDD without any file systems on them...

*. Not just HDD... you can even test your Optical Drive speed and even USB drives as well.

*. Displays other information such as File systems, partitions and their sizes, capacity, etc.

*. HDD Smart tests.

*. Format, Delete, Edit or Mount/Un-mount file systems.

You can launch this utility by pressing "Alt" + "F2" keys and put the below command and press enter (or go to: "System" -> "Administration" -> "Disk Utility" from your desktop menu as well)

palimpsest

 
Once the program is loaded, select your HDD or optical drive, etc from the list to your left and then click on the "Benchmark" button to start the tests.

But remember, it has a limitation (oh great timing Gayan! :D). That is, if your HDD is formated and has a partition table on it, then this disk test utility cannot do Write tests. It can only only perform read speed of your HDD.

It can run your HDD's Smart (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) tests too

Anyhow, even after having this limitation, still, the reason that I wrote about this utility was because, you don't have to manually install any software since it's built into Ubuntu to do a basic read-test (or the complete benchmark if you have a brand-new HDD).

But there are quite a few that we can use to do advanced benchmarks in Ubuntu and I'll write about few of 'em in the future. If you already know about them (I'm pretty sure most of you geeks know :P), you're more than welcome to share it with me dudes (+ ladies too ;-)).

Anyhow, if all you want to is just perform a basic HDD read test + access other informations such as Smart feature (which is a special function that displays "warnings" just before your HDD is about to fail so you may have enough time to backup/recover the data, etc) then you don't have to get a separate one because Ubuntu Linux comes with a one of its own and it is certainly a pretty handy utility as far as I'm concerned. Good luck.

hardinfo - an App for Performing CPU Benchmarking and Displaying Hardware Information in GNU/Linux!

In GNU/Linux world, unlike with MS Windows, gathering advanced information about your installed hardware may not always be an easy task. This is still true in never versions of Ubuntu such as the 11.04 Natty Narwhal for instance.

But thankfully there are small yet powerful applications that can be used to perform system benchmarks and gathering hardware information in GNU/Linux (talking about GUI tools here) nonetheless. Among many, "hardinfo" is such a tool.

It's a very small application (about 375Kb of size!) but lets you see through you hardware  ;-) and gives advanced info such as ...

*. Processor, RAM, Hard disks, VGA card (including advanced GPU related information, etc) and other various Motherboard related "stuff".

Man, after that "expose", I feel naked! :P...

*. Operating system version and various other related info (uptime, boot time, computer name, default desktop, etc).

*. OpenGL render version and various X.org related information.

*. Mounted file systems.

*. Users of the system.

*. PCI cards.

*. USB devices.

*. Motherboard sensor related information. 

*. Battery related info.

*. Network - Interfaces, IP connections, routing tables, etc.

*. 6 Types of CPU related benchmarks, using encrypting/decrypting mechanisms (Blowfish, CryptoHash, etc) ... are just a few to mention.

One annoying thing though, as soon as you click on one of the CPU benchmarks, "hardinfo" just launches the benchmark without a prompt!. So make sure to leave the PC/Laptop alone and close any running application while you're doing that ...

After doing all the tests and gathering the hardware information you can save the data into a HTML file for permanent access as well.

You can install hardinfo in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by entering the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install hardinfo

You can also install hardinfo in Fedora core 15 (or below versions) easily via yum by using the below command instead of the above one.

sudo yum install hardinfo

That's it mates, enjoy!.

Install HardInfo in Ubuntu, View Hardware Information and Run System Benchmarks Graphically

There are few commands that you can use to run few benchmarks in Linux but why the hell you wanna do that since HardInfo does all that graphically for you!. Starting with things like, gathering all of your current hardware informations such as ...

Main interface window

*. Operating system.

*. CPU type and speeds.

*. Installed RAM.

*. Boot information (logs, etc).

*. VGA drivers and hardware details.

*. HDD and Optical drive information.

*. Partitions.

*. Users.

*. Network interfaces, etc.....

But it is not the cool thing about it actually. With HardInfo, you can easily test how well your hardware performs (benchmarks) such as ...

*. Various CPU tests.

*. RAM tests.

*. HDD tests.

*. GPU (VGA card) tests.

*. USB/PCI/CD-DVD device testing.

*. Printers, are just a few to name.

If you have a buggy system, meaning both bad drivers and bad (physically damaged) hardware, then when running these tests, most of the time the system should crash!.

So, benchmark testing is actually a great way to find out how healthy your OS/PC really is as well. If you use Ubuntu then you can easily install it using a Terminal command.

Open your terminal and issue the below command...

sudo apt-get install hardinfo