Before you look to spend any money on upgrading a computer it’s very important you understand which component(s) is being stressed beyond it’s capabilities. For example, an application like Adobe Photoshop can be demanding in its resource usage. Logically more processor power and memory will aid in completing your tasks faster but hard drive I/O is equally important.
If you have questions or concerns about how an application or process stresses the system it’s pretty simple to determine processor or memory limits, however hard drive performance is more difficult to capture. There are many utilities that can benchmark your read and write speeds of the hard drive. While this is helpful, the ideal metric should center around the specific applications you use.
Drive Speedometer is a free utility that can display the drive performance or speed in real-time, as you go about your normal work process. The application is trivial to use; once installed and executed, the throughput of the hard drive is displayed and updated right atop your desktop.
Further configuration is possible – but almost all of it is of cosmetic nature. Drive Speedometer is a low-frills application that accomplishes is singular goal in a simple fashion. While inference and interpretation of the results is still necessary, it does uncover performance numbers that are otherwise more difficult to track.
Additionally, if your hard drive routinely fails to hit acceptable or otherwise advertise speeds it could well be the early warning signs of disk failure.
