How do I determine the read/write speed?

[Crumb]

remember that if you compare speeds of different systems you should indicate the block size.

I get better results with 2kbytes and 4kbytes blocks than with 512bytes... And with the size of icons 2kbytes is usually a nice size.

BTW you can use IDE<->UWscsi controllers to have a lot of space.

I use SCSIBench (it's on Aminet) to test the speed of my drives.

[Crumb]

@Nightsade
I'm refering to the size of the clusters of the hard disk, you can change this size in the advanced preferences of HDToolbox. Windows systems usually have 4kbyte clusters, Amigas 512bytes or 1kbyte. Changing that setting to 2-4kbytes improves the speed.

After reading your comment I remember that on most hd speed benchmark programs you can select the size of the data to be written to hard disk, well, I wasn't refering to this, but yes, you are right it's another setting that should be included in any benchmark.

And remember that an empty hard disk is much faster than a full one...

So anyone who makes a benchmark about disk speed should give information about:
The filesystem used and the cluster size (I'm used to the word "block" size, I think that HDToolbox uses this name)
The model of controller and HD
The buffers the volume had.
The HD was empty or full
The X MB/s he got transfering chunks of Y Kbytes reading (or writing)

[Crumb]

I don't know if the name in english is cluster or block. But simply select a partition, enter in the advanced options and search an option called block size or something similar, it's usually in 512bytes as default...