hdd intensive test utility?

  • Thread starter Thread starter geos
  • Start date Start date
G

geos

Hello,

Is there any software that tests harddisks which works differently and
longer than those benchmarking drives? I need a tool to simulate
intensive reading/writing/random accessing drive for a few hours and
could not find anything like that. processors have their prime95 test,
memory has its own memtest86.. how about harddisks? is there any tool
like that? can you suggest something to acomplish this task?

regards,
geos
 
geos said:
Hello,

Is there any software that tests harddisks which works differently and
longer than those benchmarking drives? I need a tool to simulate
intensive reading/writing/random accessing drive for a few hours and
could not find anything like that. processors have their prime95 test,
memory has its own memtest86.. how about harddisks? is there any tool
like that? can you suggest something to acomplish this task?

regards,
geos
Click to expand...

Write your own. Make a .BAT file that creates a large file on one HD,
then copies that file to every other HD on your PC, then compares the
copies to the original, then deletes the copies and loops back to re-copy.
{My version copies in a chain (C: to D:, D: to E:, ..., K: to L:); and my
version pauses from time to time to ask the operator if he is done, then
either loops back or cleans up.}

For more stress, run that .BAT concurrently with defragging all HDs,
and/or virus scanning all HDs, and/or ScanDisk/Thorough (iff on W9x)
all HDs, and/or searching all files for some non-existent string, etc.

Don't assume that any failure under stress indicates a bad HD; WinDuhs
is suspected of still having a few imperfections <g>. You could, of
course, use some other OS -- every non-M$ OS has a batch capability
that is at least as good as any from M$.
 
Bob said:
Write your own. Make a .BAT file that creates a large file on one HD,
then copies that file to every other HD on your PC, then compares the
copies to the original, then deletes the copies and loops back to re-copy.
{My version copies in a chain (C: to D:, D: to E:, ..., K: to L:); and my
version pauses from time to time to ask the operator if he is done, then
either loops back or cleans up.}

For more stress, run that .BAT concurrently with defragging all HDs,
and/or virus scanning all HDs, and/or ScanDisk/Thorough (iff on W9x)
all HDs, and/or searching all files for some non-existent string, etc.

Don't assume that any failure under stress indicates a bad HD; WinDuhs
is suspected of still having a few imperfections <g>. You could, of
course, use some other OS -- every non-M$ OS has a batch capability
that is at least as good as any from M$.
Click to expand...

thanks for response Bob.. yes, I thought about a .BAT file but in my
situation a) it would take me some time to learn how to write batch
files, and b) I would like to have a tool which tests reading/writing
to/from random generated sectors throughout the disk. I mean that some
areas could not be tested using the batch file (I may be wrong about it)
while using the tool that forces reading/writing to/from some areas
would be better for me.

I'm still looking on the Internet for such a tool, but "benchmarks,
benchmarks" everywhere :)

cheers,
geos
 
geos said:
Hello,

Is there any software that tests harddisks which works differently and
longer than those benchmarking drives? I need a tool to simulate
intensive reading/writing/random accessing drive for a few hours and
could not find anything like that. processors have their prime95 test,
memory has its own memtest86.. how about harddisks? is there any tool
like that? can you suggest something to acomplish this task?

regards,
geos
Click to expand...
Have a look at spinrite6 at grc.com it costs $s but not too much and will
give your drive(s) a very good workout, could last minutes, hours,days or
weeks depending on size of disk, what it finds and at what level you set it
to.
Note I would not call SR6 a random read/write tool, very intensive yes.

It all depends on what "testing" you wish to do, SR6 main job is disk
"repair"/data recovery but in doing so it will look very hard at the disk
subsystem.
It also does not work as well on RAID systems as the RAID contrtoller "gets
in the way" this may change with version 6.1.
regards
ted
 
ted said:
Have a look at spinrite6 at grc.com it costs $s but not too much and will
give your drive(s) a very good workout, could last minutes, hours,days or
weeks depending on size of disk, what it finds and at what level you set it
to.
Note I would not call SR6 a random read/write tool, very intensive yes.

It all depends on what "testing" you wish to do, SR6 main job is disk
"repair"/data recovery but in doing so it will look very hard at the disk
subsystem.
It also does not work as well on RAID systems as the RAID contrtoller "gets
in the way" this may change with version 6.1.
regards
ted
Click to expand...

Ted, I know this great program, a friend of mine has it and we did a
surface test with this great piece of software.
I look for a utility that will simulate every day tasks but more
intensively. But thanks for the suggestion.

BTW. A few years ago there was a forum on blueplanet.com (if I remember
well). I try to find it now, but with no success. It was a great source
of information and a lot of help on the forum.. Does anybody of you
professionals who deal with hard disks remember this site?

cheers,
geos
 
geos said:
Ted, I know this great program, a friend of mine has it and we did a
surface test with this great piece of software.
I look for a utility that will simulate every day tasks but more
intensively. But thanks for the suggestion.

BTW. A few years ago there was a forum on blueplanet.com (if I remember
well). I try to find it now, but with no success. It was a great source
of information and a lot of help on the forum.. Does anybody of you
professionals who deal with hard disks remember this site?

cheers,
geos
Click to expand...
It does depend on what you arre trying to "test" most of the "every day use"
a PC gets is waiting for the "wet ware" to do the next task :-) So to speed
up the PC you need a new fast piece of "wet ware" and to simulate an average
day on a PC just leave it on and do nothing for 24 hours!! I exclude all
those "power users" who do masive rendering huge macros etc but general
"office type of work tends not to strain the PC. I was using a 200Mhz at
work upto 3 yrs ago. They had a procument policy that said "your PC will
last for x years" but for office email / word / excel work it worked just
fine. Now I use a much faster PC and all it does is show my mistakes faster
:-)
I think SR is a cool piece of SW too
ted
 
geos said:
thanks for response Bob.. yes, I thought about a .BAT file but in my
situation a) it would take me some time to learn how to write batch
files, and b) I would like to have a tool which tests reading/writing
to/from random generated sectors throughout the disk. I mean that some
areas could not be tested using the batch file (I may be wrong about it)
while using the tool that forces reading/writing to/from some areas
would be better for me.

I'm still looking on the Internet for such a tool, but "benchmarks,
benchmarks" everywhere :)

cheers,
geos
Click to expand...

You could also use windows script host and write it in VBScript or
Javascript. Below is a script that I had written to overwrite all
free space on a disk (as a cheap disk erase utility). All it does is
create unlimited 10MB files in a loop. You could use this to fill a
good part of your disk with files. Then, write another script that
randomly chooses one of the files, opens it, reads it into memory, and
closes it, all in a loop. You can run multiple copies of the scripts.
Make the file sizes smaller or larger depending on what you want to
test.

Download the "Microsoft Windows Script 5.6 Documentation" from
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/ for reference. If you know
programming, you can learn windows scripting very fast from the
documentation.

Here is the script:

erasefreespace.vbs
-----------------------------------------
Option Explicit

DIm objFSO, objDrive, objBlankFile

Dim NumberCreated, TotalRunTime
Dim MaxGB, S, E, CurrentGB, CurrentMB
Dim AverageSpeedMBPerSecond, TimeLeftSeconds
Dim str10MBString

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
NumberCreated = 0
TotalRunTime = 0
str10MBString = String(10000000,"0")

Set objDrive =
objFSO.GetDrive(objFSO.GetDriveName(WScript.ScriptFullName))
MaxGB = Int((objDrive.TotalSize / (2 ^ 30))+1)

For CurrentGB = 0 To MaxGB
If Not objFSO.FolderExists("blanks"&CurrentGB) Then
objFSO.CreateFolder "blanks"&CurrentGB
End If
For CurrentMB = 0 To 100
If Not objFSO.FileExists("blanks"&CurrentGB & "\blank" &
CurrentMB & ".txt") Then
NumberCreated = NumberCreated + 1
S = Timer
Set objBlankFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile("blanks"&CurrentGB
& "\blank" & CurrentMB & ".txt", False, False)
objBlankFile.Write str10MBString
objBlankFile.Close
Set objBlankFile = Nothing
'objFSO.CopyFile "blank.txt", "blanks"&CurrentGB & "\blank"
& CurrentMB & ".txt"
E = Timer
TotalRunTime = TotalRunTime + (E - S)
If TotalRunTime <> 0 Then
AverageSpeedMBPerSecond = NumberCreated * 10 / TotalRunTime
TimeLeftSeconds = (MaxGB * 1000 /AverageSpeedMBPerSecond)
WScript.Echo "Wrote gigabyte " & CurrentGB & "." &
CurrentMB & " of " & MaxGB & ". Running at " &
Round(AverageSpeedMBPerSecond, 2) & " MB/s. Time left = " &
Round(TimeLeftSeconds/60,2) & " minutes."
End If
End If
Next
Next
 
thanks for all the answers.. well it seems that I have to learn more a
little :)

thanks for your script Shailesh

chhers,
geos
 
ted said:
It does depend on what you arre trying to "test" most of the "every day
use" a PC gets is waiting for the "wet ware" to do the next task :-) So to
speed up the PC you need a new fast piece of "wet ware" and to simulate an
average day on a PC just leave it on and do nothing for 24 hours!! I
exclude all those "power users" who do masive rendering huge macros etc
but general "office type of work tends not to strain the PC. I was using a
200Mhz at work upto 3 yrs ago. They had a procument policy that said "your
PC will last for x years" but for office email / word / excel work it
worked just fine. Now I use a much faster PC and all it does is show my
mistakes faster
:-)
I think SR is a cool piece of SW too
Click to expand...

That all used to be true, and for someone doing word processing perhaps it
still is, but with computers being used as audio and video recording and
playback devices these days, the disk gets a workout even if the user is
just sitting there staring at the screen.
 
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