SeekSpeed V37.12 22 May 1993 Copyright Richard Waspe 1993 SeekSpeed measures the seek performance of any valid device. It works by using the system's very accurate E clock and measures the time taken for seeking and reading varying numbers of sectors under both sequential and random access. Every test is performed 100 times if possible, and the average reported. The purpose is to give a measure of access and seek times under simulated normal operating conditions, that should bear more resemblance to disk operating speed than manufacturers quoted times. Ideally, it should be used in conjunction with a good data transfer speed tester, like Mike Sinz' DiskSpeed. How long it takes to get information to or from a disk depends on access times, as measured by this program, and data transfer rate, as measured by DiskSpeed et al. SeekSpeed can be run from the CLI or WB, but requires at least V37, 2.04+ of the Operating system. The Gadget driven interface is fairly intuitive and no harm should come to any disk tested, as all access is made in a read-only manner. However, as always, it is your risk !. SeekSpeed can be run on Hard Drives, Floppies, and some types of Ram drive. Some Ram drives may not run correctly or the test may fail to start, as they do not necessarily report the correct bytes per sector, or operate with a normal filing system. The systems supplied Ram Drive is one example that will not test correctly. On starting SeekSpeed opens a Workbench window showing an array of gadgets. There are four columns, each with four gadgets, and a row of three gadgets along the bottom of the window. the only gadgets you will interact with are the three at the bottom, and the top left 'D' gadget. All the others are there to report results to you on the performance of your drive. To get things going, look at the left most column of gadgets. When first run, these four gadgets will contain, from top to bottom, a blank , and the words Sectors, Free and Size. To choose a Device to test, click on the small D gadget. A requester will open, showing the valid device choise. Double click on one of the entries, or click it once and click on OK. If the device is valid, the three lower gadgets will present information about the drive. 'Sectors' will show the total number of sectors on the drive preceeded by the letter T for Total, Free will show how many of those sectors are currently unused preceeded by the letter F, and Size will show the number of Bytes per Sector preceeded by the letter B. You will notice that the left most of the bottom three gadgets has now become un-ghosted, or active. It's marked START. Click on it, and the test will start. During the period of the test the START, PRINT and SAVE gadgets are inactive. The full test takes about 30 seconds for a hard drive up to 15 minutes or so for a floppy. This is because SeekSpeed is averaging many results in the interest of accuracy. SeekSpeed will step through three tests, with four steps to each test. The first test involves timing the drive as it seeks or steps by 1 sector. The time taken for this is displayed in the top gadget of the column entitled Sequential. The first result has 1 marked beside it, as only one sector was being seeked. SeekSpeed will continue down the column, showing the time taken in milli-seconds to sequentially seek and read 1, 8, 16, and 24 sectors. The next two tests are more stringent, and will produce a lot of noise from the drive as the heads are stepped around. Don't be alarmed, as SeekSpeed always operates within the normal operating system parameters of any drive, and is completely 'system friendly'. The thrashing of the heads in these tests is because it is now doing random access to the drive. There are two columns gadgets asscociated with these tests, under the major heading 'Random Seeks'. The first column has the heading '1 Sector'. For the four parts of this test, the drive is randomly seeking a position on the drive, and reading 1 sector. The first part involves random movements of up to 10% of the 'width' of the drive, i.e. if there are 1000 tracks on the drive, the drive will first seek sector 0, read a sector, then seek and read sector 100, then 1, then 101, then 2, then 102, and so on. The test will continue down the column, testing and giving times in milli-seconds, for random seeks at 10%, 33%, 50% and 90% of the 'width' of the drive. 90% random seeks are very severe (and noisy), and represent the sort of work a drive has to do when accessing many or fragmented files. Notice the times getting longer, and you will see the need for keeping a drive de-fragmented. The final column of tests are similar, but this time 8 sectors are read at each seek. Taking the 50% test, and our nominal drive of 1000 sectors, the drive will first seek and read sectors 0-7, then sectors 500-507, then 8-15, then 508-515, and so on. This continues for 100 seeks if possible, or until the last sector is seeked. When the final result is presented, the test is finished, and the three gadgets along the bottom of the window become active again. You may now click on any of those three. SAVE : Clicking on this gadget will show a file requester, after giving you choice to Save to a new file or Append to an existing file. Enter the Filename and Directory where you wish to save the results of your test, or choose it from the requesters list, and click on Save. The saved file will contain extra information about your system. Please edit the file, fill in the missing information, and mail it to me. PRINT : Clicking on this gadget will produce a listing of the test results on your printer if it is online. START : Re-starts the test over again. If you wish, you may now choose another device by clicking the D gadget, and start a new test. When you have finished, click on the window's close gadget at the top left of the title bar, and SeekSpeed will close it's window and finish. There are two simple menus items available. Quit - fairly obvious !, and About with some info about the program. Note SeekSpeed requires V38 of ReqTools library To the best of my knowledge, the results from this program are accurate, but how you interpret them is up to you. Never forget There are lies, damned lies, and Benchmarks ! SeekSpeed is 'ResultWare' !. If you use it and like it, then I think it would be useful to compile a database of results from your own findings. Please EMail me some test results giving full deatils of the make, size and type number of the Hard Drive tested, and details of the controller manufacturer and type and if it is IDE or SCSI. Some details of your setup would also help and your AddBuffers setting. If you are using a separate Cache program, please tell me what it is, and the size and memory type you have it set to. Acknowledgements. The original algorithms for this test came from the PC Tech Journal, November 1984, entitled "Fixed Disk Benchmark" by William Hunt. It was originally ported to the Amiga by Michael L. Hitch in 1986, portions of whose code is embedded in SeekSpeed. Thanks Michael. It has been re-written by me to take advantage of more accurate timing routines, an up to date graphical interface, and improved error checking and disk access routines. Thanks also to Commodore for their developer support program, and to the Beta testers Ian Moran, Mark Fisher, Steve Loughran, Mike Walter and Bob Adams. The user interface was designed with Jan Baard's GadToolsBox 2, and the program compiled with SAS/C V6.2 on a WB3 A2000/030/33 This software is Copyright Richard Waspe 1993, but may be freely distributed other than by magazine coverdisk. No warranty or suitability for purpose is implied or given, and it's use is entirely at your own risk. I accept no responsibility for any personal injury, loss or damage, consequential or otherwise as a result of using it. No magazine may publish this software on a coverdisk without my express permission in writing or by EMail. Fred Fish may add it to his library if he wishes. You can contact me at the following EMail addresses : waspy@cix.compulink.co.uk rwaspe@hamlet.adsp.sub.org Fidonet 2:255/72.2 Richard Waspe