Hard Drive Performance Test- Disk Speed & Health Test on Windows PC

A hard disk is one of the most important components of a computer. Although many people utilize SSD to replace HDD as the system disk, a hard drive is still one of the computer's most critical storage components. Because of the lower price but more capacity, it now functions more like a data disk to hold working or learning programs and games.

However, some users continue to utilize HDDs as system disks and some may have found that the computer slows down when performing various tasks, although the speed of other PCs stays unchanged. Computers with sluggish hard drives sometimes freeze or hang when executing several activities, thus a hard drive performance test for speed and health is necessary.

Check instant hard drive information

If you want to check instant information on your disk and computer, then you can directly use Task Manager.

Step 1. Enter “Task Manager” in the search bar and open it.

Step 2. Once open, browse to the “Performance” option.

Step 3. Select the target disk to test from the list on the left. Then you can see some basic data about that disk, including reading and writing speed.

Run full hard drive performance test

However, if you have already found that your hard drive becomes slower or there are lagging and frozen situations on your PC, then you’d better do a full hard drive performance test in recent future. A full disk check needs a test tool, here we recommend you AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

It is a free disk and partition management tool for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP system. And it has many practical features for users to check disk health, manage disk issues, and maintain disk performance.

▶ Disk Speed Test
This function is to test hard drive reading/writing speed. It provides 2 test modes: Simple and Pro. The default mode is the simple mode which allows you to choose the drive and run the test. The Pro mode will test more details. After the test, you can export the result.

▶ Check Partition & Surface test
These two features are used to check if there are bad sectors on your hard drive or not. You can choose to check only or check and repair errors via CHKDSK.

▶ Disk health
This function checks the health status of the disk by obtaining the S.M.A.R.T. information of the disk. When the disk health status is poor, the user will be prompted and the disk data can be backed up at this time.

Now, we’ll show you detailed steps of speed test and health check features.

Opt 1. Test hard drive speed

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click "Test" menu and select “Disk Speed Test”.

Step 2. The default mode is Simple Mode, click “Start” to run a simple speed test. Or click "Pro Mode" to get a more comprehensive test we introduced above.

Step 3. After the test, you can click “Export” to see the test result.

Opt 2. Check hard drive health

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. When the program is successfully launched, it will automatically obtain S.M.A.R.T. information on all hard disks in the background.

When it detects that the disk health status of one hard drive is poor, a red exclamation mark will be displayed on the disk icon. You can right-click on one hard drive and choose Properties-->Health(SMART) to see detailed S.M.A.R.T. information on this disk.

Step 2: There are 3 states of hard disk health.

State one: Good

The disk is in good condition and can be used with confidence.

State two: Caution

Except for the temperature, one or more attributes are close to the threshold. The disk still can be used normally, but it is recommended to back up the disk regularly.

State three: Bad

The disk may be damaged soon and cause data loss. It is recommended to clone this disk and replace it with a new one.

You can click "View details" to see specific S.M.A.R.T. values, red text indicates that the value of the item is equal to or exceeds the threshold.

How to improve hard drive performance?

If your hard drive doesn’t have bad sectors or other big issues, the only problem is the speed. The AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard also has two options for you to try to improve your hard drive performance.

Way 1. Clean junk files from the hard drive and OS

For users who have never completely scanned and cleaned junk files from their computers, we suggest you clean junk files first.

Usually, junk files are temporary files that were created so that your computer could do specific tasks. These files were formerly useful, but soon they will be obsolete after they have served their purpose. If junk files accumulate on your hard drive, they use a significant amount of storage space. When your storage capacity is gone, your device may become slower or experience other performance issues.

Junk files can hide deeply in numerous folders, so it’s impossible to manually clean them thoroughly. Using a clean tool will make this easier.

Step 1. Open AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, and click "Free up" and "PC Cleaner" in turn.

Step 2. Click "Start Scan" in the new pop-up window to scan your computer for unwanted files.

Step 3. After starting the scan, please wait for a while until the progress bar is loaded.

Step 4. Unneeded data will be automatically selected, you can directly click "Clean All" to delete them. If you still have other unnecessary files, you can tick the boxes of the corresponding files.

Step 5. When you see a correct symbol displayed in the interface, you can click "Back" to leave the function.

Way 2. Defrag hard drive

Another way to improve hard drive performance is to defragment it. File fragmentation might slow down your hard disk. Because they are separated data files on your HDD, their placement is too decentralized, and your HDD will take longer to discover them when you try to launch some programs. Defragmenting is the process of reorganizing and rearrangement of split files so that your HDD can rapidly discover all essential files.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant, select the disk and click "Disk Defrag" in the right menu, or just right-click on the disk and select the "Disk Defrag" function.

Step 2. Check the partition you want to be analyzed, and click "Analyze". You need to check the partition, not select it. This function currently only supports NTFS partitions, so it will only list NTFS partitions on SSD, HDD, and USB drives.

Tip: You can click "Pause" to halt the process and resume later, or click "Stop" to end the analysis process completely.

Step 3: The program will score the partition based on the fragmentation rate when the analysis is over.

Step 4. After the analysis, you can click on "Details" to see more information about the analysis results.

Step 5. Click the "Defrag" button to start the defragmentation.

Tip: You could click "Pause" to halt the procedure and resume later, or click "Stop" to terminate the process completely.

After the defragmentation is completed, the partition will be scored according to the defragmentation result.

Further options to optimize the hard drive

If your hard drive has unallocated space but it’s not next to your C drive, then you can choose “Merge Partition” to merge this space into the C drive to extend it.

If there’s no unallocated space on your hard drive but there is a D drive or other drives which have enough free space, you can upgrade to the AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition to use “Allocate Free Space” which can directly share free space from one drive to another.

If your hard drive is running out of its life, you can use the Disk Clone Wizard to quickly and safely clone your old hard drive to a new disk.

To sum up

A hard drive performance test can help you monitor your hard drive health. If you don’t know how to test hard drive performance and optimize your hard drive with the testing result, AOMEI Partition Assistant is your best choice. This handy tool also can help you convert a disk between MBR and GPT without data loss, transfer OS only, move folders and installed apps, etc. What’s more, it has the Server Edition for Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2)/2003 system.