How to check Hard disc drive performance in Linux

There is a small utility available named "hdparm". It is there with most of the Linux Distributions as standard utility but if you don't have it then you can download and install it from here :hdparm latest package download


Once it is installed or it is already there then you need to run following command :

Code:
hdparm -Tt /dev/hdX
Above you need to replace "X" with your drive later, in my case it goes like this :

Code:
hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

and it produced following output:
Code:
[Timing cached reads: 1896 MB in 2.00 seconds = 947.20 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.01 seconds = 55.79 MB/sec

To get more information about your hard disk drive, you can use following commands but they will be daunting to a normal user but can be helpful to diagnose and know about hard drive:

To know general information about your drive like its make, supported modes etc.
Code:
hdparm -i /dev/hdX

To know about the current operating flags ie. mode the HD is working:
Code:
hdparm /dev/hdX