HDD Data Read and Write Test Program Help

[GKandRiven]

I have a HP Pavilion DV6 laptop with a Sata HDD and the laptop is running way slower than it should be and one of the google suggestions was the HDD so how do I test if the HDD is running at its peak performance I know about HDAT2 ie a surface scan for bad clusters but what about data read and write tests, or a stress test, I dont really want to buy any software so please only freebees. Thanks all

Edit:

I ran Crystal Disk Mark and I have very low HDD reads they are:

Seq Q32T1 (read) = 77.56 and (write) = 61.61
4K Q32T1 (read) = 0.801 and (write) = 0.903
Seq (read) = 53.90 and (write) = 49.91
4K (read) = 0.259 and (write) = 0.866

the above test was using 5 passes with 1GiB I dont know if this hard drive is Sata 2 or 3 and I dont know if its 5400RPM or 7200RPM but I will take the HDD out and reply back, the Laptop is from about 2011 so I think the HDD is Sata 3 GB/sec so if the hard drive "is" 3GB/sec is the abouve test proof of a slow hard drive im thinking of putting an SSD in to hopefully bring up the reads to the 500 mark what do you guys think?

[two posts merged by Moderator]

 

[molletts]

For a read/write surface scan, your best bet is probably a secure disk wiping utility that supports read-and-compare after each pass. I think DBAN may offer this feature. This will wipe the drive totally, though. There may be Windows utilities that offer a non-destructive read/write test (like the Linux badblocks program) but you should back up everything beforehand even with these.

Those performance figures look pretty respectable for a laptop hard drive, especially a 2011-era one.

You could fit an SSD but bear in mind that the system's performance will probably be bottlenecked pretty heavily by other things like the CPU if it's 6 years old, unless it was a pretty high-end system when it was new. If you do fit an SSD, make sure the SATA controller is in AHCI mode, otherwise you won't get the benefit of either queueing or TRIM/DISCARD support.

You can check initially whether Windows is using AHCI by looking under storage controllers in Device Manager to see if it lists any AHCI controllers. (If not, look in the BIOS for the option; get advice before changing it as you will make your Windows installation unbootable if you don't make certain changes to the configuration first.) Sorry this is a bit vague - I don't have a Windows system to hand right now as I'm away from home.