LKBEN11683: How to benchmark your hard drive (HD) on your linux system with dd.


Symptom

You need to know the disk performance.

Cause

e.g. to decide which one to select for a server task

Solution

A simple dd command can be used to test the IO of your disk or disks on linux.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/testfile.img bs=1G count=1 oflag=dsync

This will give you an idee of your write performance. To test your read performance you can use:

sudo dd if=/tmp/testfile.img of=/dev/zero bs=8k

Read performance can be significant higher than wirte performance on some systems when using RAID.

Have fun.

Disclaimer:

The information provided in this document is intended for your information only. Lubby makes no claims to the validity of this information. Use of this information is at own risk!

About the Author

Author: Wim Peeters - Keskon GmbH & Co. KG

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience, including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform.

Latest update: 27/10/2023