Disk Throughput Calculator – Sequential Read/Write Speed
Calculate storage throughput and time to transfer data at any read/write speed.
About This Calculator
Calculate storage throughput and time to transfer data at any read/write speed. Use the calculator above for instant results.
Worked Examples
- 100 × 1024 / 500 = 204.8 seconds (~3.4 min)
Answer: ~3.4 minutes
- 1024 × 1024 / 100 / 60 = 174 minutes (~2.9 hrs)
Answer: ~2.9 hours
- ~87 minutes | Sequential HDD speed
Answer: ~87 minutes
Who Uses This Calculator?
Model data migration timelines.
Plan large file transfers.
Benchmark storage performance.
Storage sizing for data pipelines.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
❌ Sequential vs random I/O
Throughput matters for sequential I/O (video editing, backups). IOPS matters for random I/O (databases, VMs). Match metric to workload.
❌ NVMe vs SATA SSD
NVMe: 3,000-7,000 MB/s sequential. SATA SSD: 500-560 MB/s. HDD: 100-200 MB/s. NVMe is 6-14× faster than SATA SSD for sequential.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common drive speeds?
NVMe Gen4: up to 7,000 MB/s. NVMe Gen3: up to 3,500 MB/s. SATA SSD: ~550 MB/s. HDD 7200rpm: ~150-200 MB/s.
Bottleneck?
If your drive is faster than your network, local disk won't be the bottleneck for network transfers.
RAID speeds?
RAID 0 stripes across drives for higher throughput. RAID 5/6 have slower write speeds due to parity calculation.