LAB 5-8 TEST HARD DRIVE PERFORMANCE USING SANDRA

 

Objectives

The goal of this lab is to help you use SANDRA to compare the performance of your system’s drives against similar drives. After completing this lab, you will be able to:

➤ Use SANDRA to test your drive’s performance

➤ Use SANDRA to compare your system’s drives with similar drives

 

Materials Required

This lab will require the following:

➤ Windows 9x operating system

➤ SiSoft SANDRA 2011

 

Download and Install SANDRA

  1. Go to www.sisoftware.com or the pub folder and download Sandra 2011 Lite. (Note: The Techspot server worked for me on December 6, 2010.
  2. Log into your Windows XP.
  3. Install SANDRA. Do not install the PDA versions.

 

SANDRA Lite can be used to run all sorts of tests on your hard drive. It should give you a nice indication of how your drive is running. We’re going to use SANDRA to test our hard drives. SANDRA is actually updated quite often, so if you use it at a tech you’d want to check for the newest version.

 

  1. Start SANDRA.
  2. Click the hardware tab.
  3. Click physical drives to analyze your hard drive and fill in the information below.

Type (SCSI, ATA, SATA)

 

Interface

 

Cache size

 

Total sectors

 

Number of ECC Bytes

 

Bytes per sector

 

Capacity

 

Partition information

 

 

 

Temperature

 

ECC Corrected count

 

List four features of your drive

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Space used

 

 

 

  1. What are two performance tips the program gives you to speed up the drive?

 

 

 

  1. Click on the Benchmarks tab and click Physical Disks.
  2. How fast is your drive? ____________________________  MB/S (Megabytes per second)
  3. What four drives does the program compare your drive with?
    1. ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ______
    2. ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ______
    3. ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ______
    4. ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ______
    5. Which ones are faster?
    6. Slower?
  4. What could you do with this information?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Scroll down to benchmark breakdown. Fill out the following information.

 

What was the drive index speed?

 

What was the random access time?

 

Is index speed good or bad?

 

Buffered write

 

Look at detailed benchmark results

 

Which position shows the fastest speed?

 

Slowest?

 

 

 

Review Questions

  1. Why might you want to test your drive with SANDRA?

 

 

  1. Based on the drive ratings information from SANDRA, do you think a drive performs better if it spins faster or slower?

 

 

  1. Based on the drive ratings information from SANDRA, do you think a drive performs better if it reads data randomly or sequentially?

 

 

  1. What does this tell you about a fragmented hard drive?