Try out www.pcpitstop.com . They have free testing with recommendations. 
You do not have to buy anything though they have suggested programs to 
purchase.

Tom Mayer

Trey Holm wrote:
>  
> Great information.  Any chance on or both of ya'll could tell the
> neophyte (Me) how to run a speed test?  I would love to know from time
> to time because I have just installed a server in my office and it is
> much slower at times than promised or expected.  I only have two
> desktops connected on site and one server connected acting as a terminal
> server for remote desktop for my offsite people access the database and
> programs.  I have a Dell Power edge 1800 with Windows SBS 2003 acting as
> the file server and running Outlook for everyone using what they call an
> Exchange Server.  The Exchange server is constantly using 1.3G to 1.8G
> of what is called virtual memory to run.  I have 2G of RAM in it that
> came pre-installed.
>
> Anyway, would love to know how to run a speed test on it and my XP SP2
> Dell Optiplex GX620.
>
> Thanks,
> Trey Holm
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Russ Poffenberger
> Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 9:31 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Hard Drive Speed test
>
> Hi Don,
>
> 150 is the maximum interface speed. The disk being a rotational device
> is governed by physical laws constrained by the platter rotation speed
> and bit density on the platters. Regardless of how fast the interface
> is, you can't get the bits off the platter any faster than they pass
> under the read/write heads. You may get a very short burst faster than
> the platter speed as data is pulled out of the cache, but the cache is
> exhausted in a fraction of a second.
>
> To make it more complicated, the bit density varies between the inside
> and outside tracks of the platters, so that the measured speed depends
> on where the test was performed physically on the disk.
>
> Most disks these days spin at 7200RPM, with lower end and most notebook
> drives running at 5400 RPM. Higher end disks like the Western Digital
> Raptor spin at 10000RPM, but are considerably more expensive. At the
> very high end are Seagate Cheetah disks (usually SCSI or fiber only)
> that spin at 15000RPM. These are typically employed in servers.
>
> HTH,
> Russ Poffenberger
> [log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don Penlington
> Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 10:21 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Hard Drive Speed test
>
>
> XP Pro SP2.
>
> In Device Manager/IDE Controllers/ Secondary Channel,  when I run the
> speed test for my Hard Drive (Serial ATA DMA) it says that the
> theoretical speed is 150. The Burst speed on test is 113 and sustained
> speed is 58.
>
> These test figures seem to me to be way short of the theoretical speed.
> Is the theoretical speed that for an "ideal" HD, or is it the
> theoretical speed for my actual HD?
>
> Should I be worried, or are these results normal?
>
> I don't seem to have any problems---just curious.
>
> Don Penlington
>
>            
>
>   

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