It`s not really necessary to say that the hard drive is one of the most important and essential parts of your PC. That means it`s always a good idea to check it every so often, and make sure everything is working perfectly. For this you only need one tool, and it`s called Roadkil´s Disk Speed.
It is a small, free utility that doesn`t even need installing. Roadkil´s Disk Speed deeply checks your hard drive, to measure the data access and transfer speeds. It reads different sectors at random and generates a list showing you the times needed for each access.
Roadkil´s Disk Speed also offers you additional information on the hard drive, like the model, size, file system, etc.