Automated Disk Drive Characterization

DIXtrac is a program that automatically characterizes the performance of modern disk drives. This report describes and validates DIXtrac's algorithms, which extract accurate values for over 100 performance-critical parameters in 2 { 6 minutes without human intervention or special hardware support. The extracted data include detailed layout and geometry information, mechanical timings, cache management policies, and command processing overheads. DIXtrac is validated by con guring a detailed disk simulator with its extracted parameters; in most cases, the resulting accuracies match those of the most accurate disk simulators reported in the literature. To date, DIXtrac has been successfully used on over 20 disk drives, including eight di erent models from four di erent manufacturers. Jiri Schindler was supported by funding from Data Storage Systems Center and Parallel Data Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the oÆcial policies, either expressed or implied, of the respective centers or Carnegie Mellon University.