How to Test External Hard Drive Speed | 3 Easy Methods

The speed of external hard disk directly affects disk performance. This article will introduce how to test external hard drive speed in Windows 10/11 system.

External hard disks are widely used for expanding storage space, data backup and file transfer. Hard disk speed directly affects file transfer speed and application loading speed. Testing disk speed and taking corresponding optimization measures will help improve disk performance and work efficiency.

The following describes several methods to test the speed of external hard disks in Windows systems:

Method 1: Use Task Manager

Windows Task Manager not only provides useful information about CPU, memory, etc., but also provides real-time disk read and write speed and some other basic disk information. You can view disk speed through Task Manager.

1. Right-click the Start button and select Task Manager .
2. Go to the Performance tab.
3. Select the target external hard drive from the left panel, and you can see its read and write speed in the right panel.

Method 2: Use the command prompt

Command prompt is a command line tool in the Windows operating system. You can use it to perform various disk management tasks, such as displaying hidden partitions in CMD, listing hard drives in CMD, and more. Here is how to test external hard drive speed using a specific command line:

Step 1. Type cmd in the Windows search bar. When the Command Prompt window appears, select the Run as administrator option.

Step 2. In the command line window, type winsat disk -drive X and press Enter . Note that you need to replace the X character with the actual drive letter of your external hard drive. For example, if the drive letter is H, you need to type winsat disk -drive h .

Wait for the command line to execute for a while, and then the random and sequential read and write speeds of the disk will be displayed.

Method 3: Use MiniTool Partition Wizard

In addition to Task Manager and CMD, you can also use professional disk management tools to get more detailed information about disk read and write speed. We recommend you to use the free partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard.

The software's disk benchmarking feature can help you measure disk random read/write speed and sequential read/write speed for free. Click the following button to download the MiniTool Partition Wizard and start the disk benchmarking process.

Step 1. Launch the downloaded free disk manager to enter its main interface.

Step 2. Click Disk Benchmark Options from the top menu bar.

Step 3. In the Disk Benchmarks section, configure the required parameters and click the Start button. Wait patiently for the disk benchmarking process to complete, and the disk read and write speed will be displayed graphically.

For more instructions, see: How to measure disk performance using disk benchmarks.

Recommend a powerful data recovery software

Hard disk data may be lost due to various factors, such as disk file system corruption, virus infection, accidental deletion, operating system crash, etc. In this case, finding reliable and green data recovery software is the top priority.

Among the secure data recovery services, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is the most worth checking out. It is good at recovering files from hard disks, SSDs, USB drives, SD cards and other file storage media. It has multiple versions with different data recovery adaptability. If this is your first time using it, you can download its free version that supports 1 GB of free file recovery and try it out.

Summarize

How to test the speed of external hard drives? You can get specific disk speed data from Task Manager, or use CMD or MiniTool Partition Wizard. If you have any problems using MiniTool software, please contact the support team.

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