I recently had the need to stress test a hard drive because I thought it was failing and needed to prove that to a dedicated server provider. I wasn’t able to replicate the problems I had been seeing with straight file copies and such, so I decided to really hit the disk with a benchmarker. bonnie++ did the trick. Within 5 minutes, I was able to duplicate the errors I had seen during heavy load of the disk. I could then phone up the dedicated provider and tell them to replace the disk. So, if you’re in need of a benchmarking tool, or just something to put some heavy load on a disk, check out bonnie++. Available in /usr/ports/benchmarks/bonnie++/ for those with a superior operating system.