measuring disk activity? (like Anandtech Storage Bench)

[unclben]

When Anand introduced the AnandTech Storage Bench, he didn't mention the name of the software that allows him to record and play back a given window of disk activity. I don't really need the playback part, but I want to record and analyze the disk activity on an under-performing file server (file size distribution, write vs. read, sequential vs. random, queue depth, etc.).

Does anybody know what software he's using or what software can perform a similar function? The OS in question is Windows Server 2003.

TIA,
Ben

 

[CyberTron]

I recently found ATTO bench and have found it pretty useful. I found it being used in a number of SSD benchmarks and so I have been using it to measure my www, sql, and file server performance.

http://is.gd/aTHOE

 

[Nothinman]

You can collect tons of stats with perfmon.

 

[unclben]

CyberTron: Maybe I am misunderstanding about ATTO Bench, but it looks like it's meant for benchmarking where you tell it a set of variables (write size, queue depth, etc.) and it tells you the performance. I'm looking for something that will record the actual values of the variables (write size, etc.) over a given time period as the server goes about its business. Basically, I need to do a "reverse benchmark". From what I read, ATTO Bench doesn't do that... but maybe I didn't read deep enough.

Nothinman: I never really played around much with perfmon before - it really can do a lot! I haven't used Windows at home (i.e. as a hobbyist/enthusiast) in years, but I'm still a little embarrassed that I never learned about its capabilities when I was an all-Windows person up through the early days of XP.

Thanks to both of you for the fast replies. My end goal is to see whether a SSDs (or even faster mechanical drives) will be a worthwhile upgrade for one of the servers at work. I'm not the IT guy (which is my excuse for not knowing perfmon's capabilities!); I'm just the guy who's annoyed enough by the slow server to take things into his own hands.