How to: Linux check IDE / SATA hard disk transfer speed

So how do you find out how fast is your hard disk under Linux? Is it running at SATA I (150 MB/s) or SATA II (300 MB/s) speed w/o opening computer case or chassis?

You can use hdparm command. It provides a command line interface to various hard disk ioctls supported by the stock Linux ATA/IDE/SATA device driver subsystem. Some options may work correctly only with the latest kernels (make sure you have cutting edge kernel installed). I also recommend to compile hdparm with the include files from the latest kernel source code. It provides more accurate result.

Measure hard disk data transfer speed

Login as the root and enter the following command:
$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda
OR
$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/hda
Output:

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   7864 MB in  2.00 seconds = 3935.41 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  204 MB in  3.00 seconds =  67.98 MB/sec

For meaningful results, this operation should be repeated 2-3 times on an otherwise inactive system (no other active processes) with at least a couple of megabytes of free memory. This displays the speed of reading directly from the Linux buffer cache without disk access. This measurement is essentially an indication of the throughput of the processor, cache, and memory of the system under test. Here is for loop to run test 3 time in a row:
for i in 1 2 3; do hdparm -tT /dev/hda; done

Where,

• -t :perform device read timings
• -T : perform cache read timings
• /dev/sda : Hard disk device file

To find out SATA hard disk speed, enter:
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep SATA
Output:

           *    SATA-I signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
           *    SATA-II signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)

Above output indicate that my hard disk can use both 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s speed. Please note that your BIOS / Motherboard must have support for SATA-II.

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