Simple benchmarking method for Linux disks

The following is a simple benchmarking method for disks in Linux. These are basic commands for testing disk read/write performance.

Write test

dd if=/dev/zero of=benchmark bs=64K count=32K conv=fdatasync

This command reads data from /dev/zero (a special file that outputs infinite zeros) and writes it to a file called ‘benchmark’. The write block size (bs) is 64K and the number of blocks (count) is 32K. Synchronization (fdatasync) is performed after all data has been written to disk.

Read test

dd if=benchmark of=/dev/null

Reads the ‘benchmark’ file created in the write test and outputs its contents to /dev/null (a special file that displays nothing). This allows you to measure the read performance of the disk.