1

Test your hard drive speed

time (dd if=/dev/zero of=zerofile bs=1M count=500;sync);rm zerofile

February 1, 2012DAVEB

Explanation

Creates a 500MB blank file and times how long it takes to finish writing the entire thing to disk (sync)

time the entire dd + sync operation, and then remove the temporary file

Limitations

Works with Bash; not tested in other environments