Hard Drive Test Information

Hard Drive Benchmark results (“Baselines”) were gathered from users’ submissions to the PassMark web site as well as from internal testing. PerformanceTest conducts three different tests and then averages the results together to determine the PassMark Disk Mark for a system.

Three standard tests have been defined:

Disk Sequential Read

A large test file is created on the disk under test. The file is read sequentially from start to end.

Disk Sequential Write

A large file is written to the disk under test. The file is written sequentially from start to end.

Disk Random Seek RW

A large test file is created on the disk under test. The file is read randomly; a seek is performed to move the file pointer to a random position in the file, a 16KB block is read or written then another seek is performed. The amount of data actually transferred is highly dependent on the disk seek time.