Unlocking the Power of Your PC’s Storage
Have you ever wondered how your computer’s storage compares to the latest and greatest? Well, buckle up, my friends, because I’m about to take you on a wild ride through the world of disk benchmarking. Strap on your seatbelts, because we’re about to put the pedal to the metal and see what our trusty Windows 10 machines can really do.
Now, I know what you might be thinking – “Benchmarking? That sounds like a job for the techies, not little ol’ me.” But let me tell you, it’s actually a lot easier than you might think. And trust me, once you see the results, you’ll be thanking me for opening your eyes to the true potential of your machine.
So, let’s dive right in, shall we? Today, we’re going to be using a nifty little tool called DiskSpd, courtesy of the wonderful folks over at Microsoft. This bad boy is designed to put your storage through its paces, simulating real-world workloads and giving you the cold, hard numbers you need to know how your system stacks up.
Putting DiskSpd to the Test
Now, I know what you’re thinking – “But how do I even use this thing?” Well, fear not, my friends, because I’m about to walk you through it step-by-step. First things first, you’ll need to head on over to the Microsoft Azure documentation and take a look at the examples they’ve provided. These will give you a great starting point for setting up your benchmarking environment.
The key thing to remember is that you’ll want to create a virtual machine with some beefy specs – we’re talking a Standard_D8ds_v4 with some premium SSDs attached. Once you’ve got that all set up, it’s time to start running some tests.
Warming Up the Cache
Now, before we get too carried away, there’s one important step we need to take care of – warming up the cache. See, that fancy ReadOnly caching on one of our drives is the key to unlocking some seriously fast read speeds, but we need to make sure it’s all warmed up and ready to go.
The folks over at SuperUser have a great guide on how to do this. Basically, we’re just gonna run a quick warm-up test for a couple of hours, and then we’ll be good to go.
Once that’s done, it’s time to really put the pedal to the metal. We’ll be using a high queue depth of 128, a small block size of 4KB, and four worker threads to drive those read operations on our cache-enabled volume. And let me tell you, the results are gonna blow you away.
Pushing the Limits with DiskSpd
Alright, now that we’ve got the cache all warmed up and ready to go, it’s time to see what this thing can really do. We’re gonna be using that same high queue depth and small block size, but this time, we’re gonna switch things up and go for a larger 64KB block size to really max out that throughput.
And let me tell you, the results are gonna make your head spin. According to the Microsoft docs, we should be able to squeeze out an absolute monster of a read performance – we’re talking 77,000 IOPS, people! That’s enough to make even the most hardcore PC enthusiast drool.
But wait, there’s more! We’re not just gonna stop at read performance, oh no. We’re also gonna put those write operations to the test, using four worker threads to really push those disks to their limits. And let me tell you, the results are gonna be equally impressive – we’re talking a blistering 12,800 IOPS, all while keeping that cache enabled for maximum performance.
Pushing the Limits of Your PC’s Potential
So, there you have it, folks – the secrets to unlocking the true power of your Windows 10 machine’s storage. With a little bit of elbow grease and the right tools, you can take your system to the next level and see just how much it’s really capable of.
And let me tell you, the folks over at ITFix are always happy to lend a hand if you need a little extra help getting things dialed in. They’re the best in the business when it comes to computer repair and optimization, and they’re just a click away if you ever need a tune-up.
So, what are you waiting for? Grab that DiskSpd tool, fire up your Windows 10 machine, and let’s see what kind of performance you can squeeze out of those drives. Trust me, the results are gonna be nothing short of mind-blowing.
