home | help
DISKROASTER(8)	       Multithreaded Disk Testing Utility	  DISKROASTER(8)

NAME
     diskroaster  -  multithreaded disk testing utility that writes and verifies
     data on a raw disk device

SYNOPSIS
     diskroaster [OPTIONS] DISK

DESCRIPTION
     diskroaster is a multithreaded disk testing utility designed to stress-test
     hard drives and SSDs. It divides the disk into sections and writes data  in
     parallel  using  multiple	worker	threads,  then verifies the written data
     block-by-block.

     It is useful for burn-in testing, quality control, or diagnosing disk reli-
     ability.

OPTIONS
     -h     Print help and exit.

     -w <workers>
	    Number of parallel worker threads. Default: 4.

     -n <passes>
	    Number of write+verify passes to perform. Default: 1.

     -b <blocksize>
	    Block size for write operations. Default: 4096 bytes.  Supports k or
	    m suffixes (e.g., 64k, 1m, 32m).

     -z     Write zero-filled blocks instead of random data.

EXAMPLES
     Run 8 parallel workers, writing 32MB zero-filled blocks  to  /dev/ada1  and
     verifying them:

	    diskroaster -w 8 -b 32m -z /dev/ada1

OUTPUT AND VERIFICATION
     Each  worker  operates on a separate section of the disk. After writing, it
     reads back the data and verifies it block by block. Any mismatches or  read
     errors will be reported.

WARNINGS
     * This tool overwrites all data on the specified disk.

     * Be  absolutely  sure the target (e.g., /dev/ada1) is not your system disk
       or a mounted volume.

     * diskroaster allocates one memory buffer per worker thread.  Total  memory
       usage is approximately:
       memory_used = num_workers ~A block_size
     Using  many  threads with a large block size can cause high memory consump-
     tion and may lead to out-of-memory (OOM) errors.

     * Root privileges are required to access raw block devices.

BUILDING
     To build and install:

	    make && make install

     Tested on Linux and FreeBSD using standard POSIX make.

AUTHOR
     Pavel Golubinskiy

SEE ALSO
     dd(1), smartctl(8)

v1.1.0				    June 2025			  DISKROASTER(8)

home | help